Mining has the potential to offer rare employment opportunities in rural areas and, arguably, boosts national economies. However, it also carries vast social and environmental risks, many of them related to water contamination and worsening water scarcity. How risks and benefits of mining and mining-related water use are allocated touches on issues of social equity, public health, good governance and environmental integrity.

Which procedures and governance arrangements exist to mitigate adverse impacts?  How can a balanced and equitable consideration of diverging interests and priorities be ensured and what happens when such consideration does not take place? How do communities perceive and react to mining operations? How does the influence of power and private interests manifest in mining and water governance and how can this be mitigated? And what is the role of development cooperation in these regards?

Together with international academics and practitioners from water, mining, and development cooperation backgrounds, we discussed these questions at the 10th Dialogue on Water on the topic Governing water sustainably in mining and post-mining landscapes. The event took place on 8.-9. October 2020 and was hosted jointly by the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR).