Governance in the Face of Uncertainty and Change - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 180

This definition therefore takes into account both proactive and preparatory
adaptation as well as reactive and autonomous adaptation (Dovers and Hezri 2010 ;
Engle 2010 ; Tompkins and Adger 2005 ). Actions and mechanisms included in this
table represent legislation, or particular articles, regulation, policy frameworks or
institutional actions (i.e. decisions or rules of user group associations) that provide
guidance or mechanisms for drought or flood management, the prioritisation of
users during particular peak periods (scarcity or high demand) and infrastructural
adaptation to shifting hydrological patterns. While the Swiss case area covers adap-
tive mechanisms relating to both flooding and scarcity situations, the Chilean exam-
ples pertain only to drought and scarcity. The definition is deliberately broad and
evades an exclusive linkage to climate change impacts since other studies have
highlighted the difficulty in separating 'pressures exerted as a result of climate
change from other economic, environmental or developmental pressures' (Tompkins
and Adger 2004 , p 564).
Across the two cases areas, adaptive actions ranged from historical coping tech-
niques to legal prescriptions for prioritising uses in periods of scarcity to more radi-
cal policy reform. Unsurprisingly, the mechanisms for dealing with drought and
flooding were very different, but lessons can be drawn from the institutional pro-
cesses that allow for these mechanisms to be implemented. Other studies (e.g.
NeWater) comparing adaptation across case studies experiencing flood or drought
impacts have noted that flooding tends to illicit more advanced strategies (Huntjens
et al. 2011 ) .
The NeWater project suggests that this may be explained partly by different risk
perceptions (Green et al. 2007 ) and the difference in available solutions to the two
extremes, which itself is related to the unique natures of the different extremes.
Huntjens et al. ( 2011 ) posits that flooding is primarily a safety concern, while
drought management concerns water scarcity and allocation management problems.
The suggestion seems to be that drought and scarcity issues can be seen as more
polemic and divisive than flood management issues, with less potential technical
and management fixes available. While the adaptive actions across the Chilean and
Swiss studies are quite different, interestingly, the nature of the Swiss flood man-
agement solutions can be seen to be as polemic as those of the drought issues within
the Chilean studies, on which the following sections will go into more detail.

10.2 Characterising Adaptive Responses

Adaptive responses in each of the case areas were categorised according to the con-
cepts of transformation, persistent adaptation and passive change, as discussed in
Part I. By categorising the responses in terms of these categories, it allowed a link-
age to be established between governance mechanisms that allowed for more sus-
tainable and resilient approaches to water management solutions and those that
fostered responses that might not build adaptive capacity or even degrade resilience
in the face of increasing stresses and uncertainty. In addition, in order to characterise