303 6. DISCUSSION Peru’s Water Resources Law formally adopted IWRM as its guiding management approach. Its implementation across river basins nationwide, however, continues to face significant challenges, including gaps in political will at multiple territorial scales and the absence of effective multisectoral water policies capable of driving concrete interventions, particularly in smaller high-Andean basins characterized by a weak State presence. In principle, CRHCs are intended to serve as the primary governance mechanism. In practice, however, their consultative nature and limited technical and financial resources constrain their capacity to promote water management processes that ensure representative participation and territorialized investment within larger basins. As a result, this governance model risks becoming an unfulfilled aspiration unless the intervention framework is reconsidered and the roles of subnational government bodies and the water authority itself are more clearly defined and operationalized within both regulatory and functional arrangements. The creation of additional councils without adequate institutional support and shared political commitment may undermine the sustainability of the model itself. Within this context, METRHI emerges as a direct governance mechanism that enables and makes transparent the interactions and agreements among different water users at the territorial level. While it does not replace the CRHC, it provides a space for direct and fluid participation that allows actors within a defined area to jointly deliberate and act in a collaborative manner, under the guiding role of ANA’s decentralized authority. The outcomes of this process are tangible for all stakeholders, who collectively assess and reflect on their own practices and commitments related to water management within the basin of interest. From this perspective, the mining project enters a shared governance logic in which its technical and social teams also recognize that relationships and interactions derived from corporate social responsibility or community relations practices cannot be confined to a narrowly defined environmental area of influence. Such territorially bound approaches tend to reinforce bilateral relationships and result primarily in negotiated social investment, rather than in collective learning processes and substantive contributions to water governance and sustainable territorial development. A key question arises: if CRHCs have exhibited sustainability limitations after more than fifteen years of implementation, could similar challenges affect METRHI? Indeed, participatory and water governance mechanisms in mining-influenced territories that are not firmly anchored in the water authority, local government institutions, and the co-participation of the mining titleholders face the risk of losing momentum over time and becoming ineffective in achieving sustainable water governance objectives. In this regard, the initial articulation among these actors to promote the Water Resources Thematic Roundtable is fundamental to sustaining the process over time. Finally, METRHI may serve as an initial platform for territorially grounded water governance, given its establishment at the scale of a smaller hydrographic unit. Over time, it may be articulated with the process of forming the corresponding CRHC, providing the latter with an organizational and participatory precedent that strengthens its institutional consistency and legitimacy.
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