Governance in the Face of Uncertainty and Change - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 187

expertise, some financial power over the communes; local: right to local autonomy,
water sovereignty, land rights) leading to an extenuated impasse in passing the imple-
mentation plan, but the potential to negotiate a common, integrated solution.

10.2.2 Persistent Adaptation

Responses that allow for the 'persistence of the fundamental properties of the cur-
rent system through adaptation' (Chapin et al. 2009 , p 20) were classified as 'per-
sistent adaptation', to distinguish it from transformative adaptation . Adaptive
responses were coded as persistent adaptation if they exhibited aspects of techni-
cal or governance innovation, which while they may not be transformative in
terms of fostering SES resilience, it still introduced new, innovative approaches to
decision making or water resource management. Examples of governance innova-
tion might be the attempt to generate new or enhanced knowledge or partnerships
for addressing resource challenges. Examples of technical innovation could relate
to the development of new techniques or improvements to irrigation efficiency
(new irrigation technologies or efficiency gains through infrastructure mainte-
nance and repair), or hard path infrastructural solutions for scarcity, drought,
rivalries or flooding, that also incorporated aspects of uncertainty relating to cli-
mate change.
Adaptation is deemed to be a manifestation of adaptive capacity, notably as a
means of reducing vulnerability to present stresses and future impacts (Smit and
Wandel 2006 ). However, this form of adaptive behaviour is more associated with
means of 'coping' with climate variability rather than shaping responses to climate
change that improves resilience of the SES, and adapting to the changes in physical
parameters of the system. Boxes 10.2 and 10.3 below highlight two of the responses
that were categorised as persistent adaptation responses according to the criteria
above: the Turno from Chile and the MINERVE project in the Swiss case. The
Aconcagua project also meets certain criteria of persistent adaptation , but the focus
on steady state hydrology and the lack of integration of climate based uncertainty
projections into the scoping plans, means that it was more heavily weighted as a
passive response, and so shall be discussed later.
MINERVE represents a governance innovation in the knowledge network that
frames the cantonal response system to extreme hydrological events. It incorporates
a number of transformational characteristics in its fundamental integration of
uncertainty based science and cross-sector partnerships for knowledge sharing
in the public-private partnership. However, since it represents an innovation in
only the information system for improving response to extreme events, it does
not have the more transformative characteristics of shaping the broader resilience of
the SES.