Operationalising Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 255

rewarding, step would be to develop this platform as neutral territory to negotiate
and resolve the 10 year long stand-off surrounding the project, by making it more
inclusive and providing an arena for dissemination of scientific studies on the basin.
This could potentially overcome the current impasse on the scientific basis for
groundwater reserves, where the DGA and DOH (together with the irrigators them-
selves) both have contradictory studies behind their arguments for exploitation or
protection of the groundwater in the basin. The impasse over groundwater avail-
ability and the Aconcagua project reflects the levels of distrust between the different
administrative bodies, the different sectors and the different upstream and down-
stream actors within the case area. Irrigators view the DGA as blocking their private
adaptation ability by closing the groundwater reserves for new rights, since it has
been declared to be beyond sustainable extraction. The lack of trust and agreement
on scientific evidence blocks the actors' ability to build opinions from a common
basis, leading eventually to a further depletion of increasingly vulnerable scarce
resources.
The division of the Aconcagua River into four different sections, with three func-
tioning Junta de Vigilancia (and only two that are legalised) means that during peri-
ods of scarcity and drought, upstream rights owners are better positioned to control
flows to the rest of the Juntas in the basin. While proportional reduction is negoti-
ated across the basin, in reality the upper rights owners may not follow through on
promises. Some irrigators felt an overarching basin organisation would allow a
more efficient, expedient and less costly resolution in cases of such power imbal-
ances, not only between different rights holders, but in holding the government
agencies to account as well.
Although formal routes of negotiation and conflict resolution can be costly and
lengthy, the autonomy of water rights holders means that private negotiation between
different actors and actor groups (e.g. Utilities, Mining companies and Junta de
Vigilancia, and regional officials) often can replace the more time and resource
consuming official routes. However, other studies have also shown that this private
bargaining and negotiation can also lead to injustices for the weaker political and
economic actors (Alvarez 2005 ). It also closes the door for other stakeholders to
participate in decision making over water resources, to which they may or may not
have rights, but an interest in its equitable and sustainable management (i.e. other
users of the ecosystem services provided from the watershed, e.g. coastal fishermen,
domestic water users, environmental bodies).
Money is an amazing motivator. In both case areas, financial subsidies play an
important role in incentivising and enhancing levels of cooperation between differ-
ent actor groups and levels. In the Chilean case, drought declarations come with
levels of both enhanced coordination through the DGA, but also increasing avail-
ability of financing for adaptation from the Ministry of Interior (through the DGA).
Drought declarations also imply increased liability of the government if third party
rights are affected by DGA approval of provisional groundwater abstraction.
As climate impacts mount, DGA intervention, according to current rules, would
mount. Yet while water rights owners are adverse to increasing levels of government
involvement in water management, there is less of an aversion to government money