WATER, A COMMON GOOD

Censat Agua Viva conceives water as a common good, fundamental for life in all its expressions, recognizes it as an organizing element of the territories, and considers it an articulating axis. of the struggles for water justice. Likewise, it considers it as a process impregnated with ideas, meanings, values and, therefore, is inseparable from its ecological, cultural and socio-political components.

The Area was created around 2002, focused on the work of the moorlands and as a response to the organization’s reflections on environmental conflicts about its contamination by the use of agrochemicals and discharges from tanneries. Censat Agua Viva’s first texts on water were published byThe focus was on their relationship to ecological debt and environmental justice.

Among its main achievements or milestones is its participation, with a national leadership role very important, in the process of the Water Referendum between 2006–2010, wheree present relevant reflections on the forms of privatization of water in Colombia, as well as on the territories considered vital for their preservation and protection of water; in particular, during the years, we led the construction of the CoNational Paramo Conferences.

Likewise, the Area contributed to the consolidation of the National Network of Community Aqueducts, through the construction of tools for political discussion and training in the perspective of community water management.

Censat Agua Viva conceives water as a common good, fundamental for life in all its expressions, and recognizes it as an organizing element of the territories.

Currently, the work on the subject is based on the political ecology of water, based on the identification of environmental conflicts, the search for water justice, and a view of the environment. territorial management around him. Our analysis shows that there is a crisis in the system. and intensifies the environmental, climate and food crises, seeing nature as a frontier for the creation of new markets in an insatiable search for new products and services. accumulation. As a result, we are faced with a system in which access, control and distribution are The water resources are profoundly inequitable, and their positive and negative socio-environmental consequences are unequally distributed.

Our main bets are oriented towards the consolidation of proposals for territorial and alternative autonomies in which the defense of water as a common good is an articulating axis.

We build with other organizations proposals for community, public and popular management. as an alternative to the development model, understanding that the struggles for the defense of water are are closely linked to those for environmental democracy and for the recognition of environmental to participate and decide sovereignly and autonomously on the ways of living with dignity in the countries of the region. territories. Secondly, we aim at strengthening theo processes for the protection of rivers, moorlands, wetlands and other water territories, as scenarios for the reproduction of life in all its expressions.

On the other hand, the phenomena of commodification are approached from a critical view of national policies and the inclusion of water in free trade agreements and free trade agreements. cooperation. Likewise, we actively participate in the popular struggles for the recognition of the fundamental right to water, understood not only as the right to access and consumption in sufficient quality and quantity, but also linked to the protection of essential ecosystems for the water cycle. In the same sense, we denounce patterns of destruction on moorlands and The project has been developed as a proposal for the recognition of the historical and community efforts that have been consolidated around the vital liquid.

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