The practice of building small dams has increased in Brazil and has become commonplace in the Brazilian Amazon. However, the Brazilian institutional and legal framework has not followed the progress of this practice with the establishment of adequate small dam management, which has contributed to a growing number of disasters. The inertia of the government agencies responsible for managing these structures cannot be attributed to the alleged fact that there are not enough small dams to pose significant risks to and damage the environment. Given this risk and damage scenario, we know that scientific production generates important information for stimulating management policies and improvements that minimize and/or mitigate potential risks. Thus, focusing on scientific production, this paper analysed whether the Brazilian scientific community is generating knowledge to contribute to or stimulate discussions about the management of small dams. For this purpose, we used the bibliometric method to investigate whether scientific research on Brazilian dams motivates discussions about the management of small dams, thus identifying whether the scientific community has a lack of knowledge of or has neglected small Brazilian dams. The analysis of 189 articles on Brazilian dams showed that although small dams were known, the scientific community did not produce information about them that encouraged the discussion of applicable sustainable policies. The neglect of the scientific community contributed to the inertia of competent institutional and legal bodies in managing small dams.

在巴西，建造小水坝的做法有所增加，在巴西的亚马逊地区已变得司空见惯。但是，巴西的体制和法律框架并未随着建立足够的小水坝管理而跟随这种做法的进展，这导致了越来越多的灾难。负责管理这些建筑物的政府机构的惯性不能归结为所谓的事实，即没有足够多的小水坝对环境构成重大威胁并破坏环境。在这种风险和破坏情景下，我们知道科学生产会产生重要信息，以刺激管理政策和改进措施，从而最大程度地减少和/或减轻潜在风险。因此，专注于科学生产，本文分析了巴西科学界是否正在产生知识，以促进或激发有关小水坝管理的讨论。为此，我们使用文献计量法来调查对巴西大坝的科学研究是否能激发有关小水坝管理的讨论，从而确定科学界是否对巴西小水坝缺乏了解或忽视。对189篇有关巴西水坝的文章的分析表明，尽管人们知道小型水坝，但科学界并未提供有关它们的信息，这鼓励了有关可应用的可持续政策的讨论。科学界的疏忽助长了主管机构和法律机构在管理小水坝方面的惯性。