Operationalising Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 225

Table 12.1 Operationalised indicators of adaptive capacity relating to re gime components of the governance system with case examples

Case example
Chile Regime indicators Operationalisation Switzerland

Ownership Consistency & Certainty : To avoid recurring

fundamental shifts in rights and governance
frameworks from government to
government.

Multiple changes in legal framework
(Agrarian Reform, Water Code)
over the past 50 years has led to a
situation where the rights ownership
framework is opaque and unclear
- yet inflexible in adapting less
water (legal extraction can overrun
actual availability). Water protected
as a property right in the constitu-
tion providing high security and
certainty to rights holders (but many
of these are now seen as derechos
de papel/paper rights.

Shifting relevance of traditional private
rights, shifting institutions for their
management.
80-100 year concessions periods for
hydropower usage rights.

Legal certainty around ownerships and use
rights is required for water owners and
investments in water rights.

Coverage : Coverage of all water rights/uses
(removing blind spots from rights frame-
work - e.g. glaciers, precipitation) CC
means a closer eye needs to be paid to these
unregulated areas.

Glaciers and groundwater have a
weaker institutional framework than
surface waters.

Increasing volumes of water for artificial
snow production is currently unregu-
lated, negotiated mainly through
private company agreements; certain
groundwater uses (agriculture) have no
oversight, concessions or quotas.

Clarity : In meaning of water rights (where they
are fixed; how much the flow rate is; who
owns them) and in application of the law
and translation of legal framework to
responsible parties/water owners at
watershed, local to national levels.

Border problem with ESVAL & S2/S3;
farmers exchanging rights, but no
record; selling on rights, but still
using them; process of legalising/
institutionalising user groups can be
impeded because of complex
judicial and legal procedures;
self-organisation - responsibility at
the user level not happened for
groundwater in Aconcagua.

Environmental flows are only to be taken
into account in new concessions; EPA
parameters for environmental
performance lack clarity and precision;
grundeignturm rights are very
complicated, and therefore difficult for
lawyers to really understand.