Rights to water and water's rights: Plural water governances in mining contexts of Colombia and Peru

In large-scale mining contexts and the consequent generation of socio-environmental inequalities related to access to water, indigenous peoples and peasant communities demand the recognition of other ways of understanding water. In these contexts of dispute, emerge what we call plural water governances, which position diverse relationships and infrastructures of control of water in mining contexts. Likewise, they demand the recognition of other notions of water and water's rights that transcend normative problems and extend to nature-society relations and include non-humans. We present a comparative analysis between large-scale mining areas in Colombia (La Guajira-Cerrejón) and Peru (Apurímac-Las Bambas) and the effects of the infrastructure that are implemented under a notion of water as a public resource. Processes that generate social inequalities, eliminate, or ignore ethnic and local rights, increase the capture of water in some sectors and generate scarcity that affects access, use, and decision-making in relation to water. This chapter is the result of the research carried out in the two areas in Colombia and Peru during 2018 and 2019, based on an ethnographic and collaborative work.