“Water Is Our Mother”: Eco-Spiritual Governance Among the Papallaqta of the Colombian Andes

Amid a deepening global socio-ecological crisis, Indigenous eco-spiritual practices are gaining renewed relevance for environmental governance. This article examines the water-caring practices of the Papallaqta, an Indigenous community in the Colombian Macizo—one of South America’s most vital hydrological systems. Drawing on relational methodologies, as well as extensive fieldwork conducted between 2024 and 2025, the study shows how Papallaqta spiritual relationships with water constitute a sophisticated form of governance grounded in reciprocity, reverence, and more-than-human relationality. The article situates these practices within global debates on environmental governance, where recent COP16 (Cali) and COP30 (Belém) summits have revealed the limits of technocratic, market-driven approaches to biodiversity loss, energy transition, and climate justice. Against these constraints, Papallaqta eco-spiritual governance offers an alternative paradigm based on spiritual animacy, legal cosmologies, and embodied ecological stewardship. Empirically, the article documents four interrelated dimensions of Papallaqta water-care: offerings to the water, ecological stewardship, territorial governance, and memory and cultural revitalization. Conceptually, it proposes eco-spiritual governance as an analytic for understanding how spiritual world-making informs environmental ethics, justice, and peacebuilding. The study concludes that Papallaqta practices illuminate viable pathways toward relational and regenerative environmental governance urgently needed in the current planetary crisis.