Operationalising Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 239

making, i.e. the networks through which information is disseminated and shared.
Collaboration and information sharing across different actors and levels elucidates
the extensive and pervasive challenge of getting stakeholders to cooperate and col-
laborate either formally or informally (Table 12.3 ).

12.5 Contextual Sensitivities

Despite the cases being highly varied from both a physical and institutional perspec-
tive, common elements could be operationalised according to each indicator. Similar
underlying challenges in developing and mobilising responses played out in differ-
ent contexts and ways as the tables above indicate and the following section shall
discuss them in more depth. Moreover, despite these different contexts, it is impor-
tant to attempt to generate common lessons from contrasting systems since one of
the challenges in climate change adaptation is scaling up local lessons to be appli-
cable across different contexts (Herrfahrdt-Pähle 2010 ; Smit and Wandel 2006 ) .
One point that should be addressed again at this point is the recognition that les-
sons have been drawn from both the flood and drought context. Despite the differ-
ences in the frameworks for responding and managing these hydrological situations,
both provide important lessons into the governance mechanisms that influence
adaptive processes. Notably, other studies that have compared the two contexts have
also found that case areas confronted with recent flooding have more advanced
strategies (according to AIM approaches), in comparison to drought response and
adaptation (Huntjens et al. 2011 ) .
Some studies have suggested the integration of a resilience based approach to be
easier for flood protection than drought resilience due to the different kind of risk per-
ception associated with each form of stress; moreover, the varying availability of solu-
tions to flood and drought (Huntjens et al. 2011 ) make it easier to bring stakeholders
together to find more innovative solutions in the window of opportunity after flooding
events, where safety is the primary concern. Interestingly, the window of opportunity
for those innovations may be very short, since it was recognised that a few years beyond
the last flooding issues, urgency and awareness on the need for a more novel and long
lasting approach to flooding already is fading. This means that the TRC is entering
similar emotive territory as issues surrounding water stress, where stakeholders protect
rights and ownership of resources (be it water or land) that are being threatened.
In addition, in developing and operationalising the indicators, a core tension of
adaptive capacity emerged. The challenge of balancing flexible adaptive solutions
and mechanisms at local and user levels with the policy guidance and legal certainty
required from higher administrative levels for longer term processes, transpired to be
a common issue across the different sectors in both cases. The following section
discusses the operationalised determinants of adaptive capacity and details case
examples that illuminate their role and importance in adapting to water management
challenges in the case areas, as they relate to climate change and variability. It also
highlights how the issue of flexibility or predictability relates to each indicator.