Bridges and Barriers to Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 214

et al. 2000 ; Yohe 2001 ; Adger et al. 2007 ), responses were coded and analysed
according to the governance scale at which the problem was dominant.
Tables 11.1 and 11.2 present the different perceptions of stakeholders, as to
the elements of the governance system that support or hinder effective water
management or its ability to cope with climate variability and impacts. The
specifics of the different bridges and barriers are clearly quite different across
the two case areas. In Chile, there is a stronger pre-occupation with the help or
hindrance that the water market provides at the national and regional level, due
to the dominance of the Water Code in the governance system. However, at the
local level, trust, enforcement and institutional capacity are great pre-occupations.
In Switzerland, stakeholders across all levels concentrated more on the issues of
local autonomy, including challenges and strategies related to the decentralised
mode of governance, that is a barrier to the integration of water governance.
However, synthesis across the cases does allow common themes to be identified
that relate to the ability of decision makers (at different scales and sectors) to
mobilise and facilitate responses to climate change or variability challenges.
Across both cases and levels of governance, inter-jurisdictional issues (with
associated challenges in institutional and technical capacity) and information
and data are common themes across both bridges and barriers.

11.3 Common Barriers Across the Cases

A common challenge cited by stakeholders related to physical and environmental
issues. More precisely problems of old, failing or insufficient infrastructure were
common complaints for actors inability to adapt effectively to mounting hydrological
challenges (i.e. lack of storage capacity, groundwater exploitation, and poor mainte-
nance of irrigation canals in Chile; challenges in infrastructure maintenance for flood
protection and irrigation in the Swiss case). Relatively small scale geographic dif-
ferentials (i.e. water resources differing from one village to the next) and insurmount-
able impacts from climate change (i.e. tipping points on snow pack and glacier melt)
were also cited commonly as major challenges for adaptation. These barriers relate
directly to technical and engineering solutions to climate change adaptation and other
water management issues, an area that has traditionally been the prime focus of both
adaptation and resource management policies. However, the rest of the discussion
centers on the elements of the social infrastructure that determine the decision mak-
ing environment in which these adaptation decisions are made.
A common challenge across both case areas was the challenge of power imbal-
ances and different levels of capacity across different governance levels. This is an
issue that has been cited in other studies as a major barrier to climate change mitiga-
tion and adaptation (Burch 2010 ). In the Chilean case, the main issue at the national
and regional water and environment agency levels was the friction between the tech-
nical and operational experts and the political sector. Despite high levels of techni-
cal knowledge and expertise (e.g. DGA glacier monitoring programme, highly