Colombia is home to coexisting models of regional, urban and rural water governance hierarchical schemes, open and closed decentralized or cogovernance models, network governance, collaborative and interactive governance, publicprivate and selfgovernance, with little capacity to transform the development trajectories, the conflicts and urban, agroindustrial, and extractive transformations that pose a risk for our water resources and territorial sustainability. There are also collective, interactive, selforganized, decentralized and open water governance processes, which reveal the progress and achievements in the conservation of water resources, and the generation of institutional capacities and collective action for the sustainability of the territories and the trajectory of development. Modos de gobernanza del agua y sostenibilidad presents the reader with the research results of various authors, developed during the last five years on topics and problems related to the modes of water governance and sustainability in Colombia, within the framework of the research line “Sustainability, environment and development” and courses on Institutions and Development given by the Interdisciplinary Center of Development Studies (CIDER) at Universidad de los Andes.