Water Governance in the Context of IWRM: Switzerland - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 132

Fig. 7.1 Organigram of water resource management across Canton Valais

7.2.4.5 Institutional Arrangements and Challenges Related to IWRM

Swiss water management is driven from the local level up, thereby reducing the
impact of IWRM policies proposed by FOEN at the cantonal and communal level.
Organisations such as Wasser Agenda 21 (WA21) are more focused on the theory of
IWRM, so have very little impact in practice. Despite policy briefs from FOEN
(SAEFL 2002, 2003 ), so far there is no cooperative institution at the basin level in
the Canton Valais or the Rhône basin in general, instead a complex and segregated
approach (Fig. 7.1 ) makes coordination across the different actors difficult. There
are many institutions that focus on the different elements of water, spread across
the federal, canton and communal level, leading to weak internal policy coherence
within the federal administration (Varone et al. 2002 ) and in the country as a
whole.
Many interviewees raised the issue of professionalism and lack of capacity at the
commune and canton level. Those responsible for a water management component
often do not have the time, training or both. The autonomy from federal control
(provided by Art. 50 FC) is another facet of the principle of subsidiarity and one that
has significant consequences in water management (Aschwanden et al. 2008 ) . It
makes it particularly difficult to establish appropriate geographical units for water
management, since their areas are too small to represent either natural or technical
territorial units of water courses. Over the years each canton has developed their
own brand of water management, along with their own institutions, leading to a
lack of overall vision for Switzerland (Chaix 2008 ). Some question whether this