Governance in the Face of Uncertainty and Change - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 194

and there is a lack of planning that would enable more proactive preparation. The
DGA intervention in the river implies a loss of knowledge, since government actors
lack the capacity and familiarity of the basin as water management is usually in the
hands of private actors.
The lack of agreement and coherence across different evaluations and assess-
ments of the hydrological resources available in the Aconcagua, severely limits the
ability of both public agencies and private actors to agree on plans for the develop-
ment of management and infrastructure in the basin. There is a strong awareness
amongst water owners that hydrological patterns are shifting, but as yet this has not
translated to enhanced use of technology, monitoring, modelling or integration of
uncertainty into the management and planning of water resources in the basin. The
ideological rigidity of the water market and Water Code not only informs the adver-
sity to change the framework rules which govern the current system but also con-
stricts and narrows actors' views of how to resolve the complex problems that have
been emerging. The Swiss case lacks preparedness and planning for possible scarcity
situations in the area of water supply. This is in part due to the perception of climate
change as an issue to be taken into account for long term horizon planning (30-40
years) but not yet for operational day to day management. While there is an accep-
tance and awareness of the inevitability of increasing impacts in flooding and natural
disasters, awareness on other impacts of climate change related to water availability
remains less engrained. Despite this, there is still awareness amongst technical
experts that precipitation patterns are changing and that legal mechanisms for drought
are no longer up to date.
Networks
In the Chilean case, the lack of trust between actors is a major impediment towards
fostering common integrated solutions to common problems. The impasse over the
Aconcagua project has lasted for 10 years for example. Furthermore, the DGA
perceives that the agricultural actors have strategically used legal mechanisms such
drought provision as a means of forcing the DGA's hand on groundwater exploita-
tion. At the ministerial level, the power imbalances between different ministries and
government institutions (mining, energy, agriculture versus environment and water)
has so far continued to side line the environment and weaker economic actors in
water resource management, limiting the scope for innovation for enhanced SES
resilience through cross-sector collaboration and cooperation. At the basin level,
public-private sector cooperation has taken place within the realm of the Aconcagua
Project, as well as between Junta de Vigilancia and individual companies. Private
negotiation of this sort is reported to take the form of financial pay-offs (an alternate
version of polluter pays, which does not lead to less pollution, but just an acceptance
of it), while multi-sector cooperation in the Mesa Tecnica has not as yet led to a
resolution on the project or to a solution being found.