Addressing Water Governance Challenges in the Anthropocene - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 4

the regulatory capacities of the earth maintained a safe operating space of natural
environmental change within which humanity could thrive and develop (Rockström
et al. 2009 ). It goes on to define a set of interlinked biophysical thresholds, or plan-
etary boundaries, which if crossed, could lead to irreversible and abrupt environ-
mental change with disastrous consequences for human development. These
planetary boundaries are: climate change; rate of biodiversity loss; interference with
the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean
acidification; global freshwater use; change in land use; chemical pollution; and
atmospheric aerosol loading.
The 15th Conference of the Parties meeting (COP15) in Copenhagen was seen as
a major disappointment for the global change science research community on many
fronts. The water community was one of many that came out of Copenhagen
severely disenchanted, since all references to water were dropped entirely from the
final text on adaptation, which represented a widening of the gap between the
climate and water contingents when many had hoped a connection would be further
fused. 1 COP15 showed that many were still not making the link between the climate
and water agendas, or even the wider environmental issues at stake. It also raises the
issue that many governance regimes focus on separate aspects of the social or eco-
logical systems (e.g. climate, or forests, freshwater fisheries, marine fisheries, or
even less coherently across sector specific legislation or different institutional com-
binations at ministerial level). However, there is an increasing focus from the global
change community on the need for human society and the governance systems that
moderate our actions and decisions to operate within multiple inter-connected earth
systems. Since the climate negotiations centred purely on the climate system, those
involved in carving out the climate regime fell short in recognising the need for
human society to operate within the other earth systems (Rockström et al. 2009 ) .
The link between tipping points in these planetary boundaries has been reflected
in theories of environmental resource management and governance, as well as in the
water disciplines, but has not yet been widely adopted by those outside of the
research and scientific community (Rockstrom et al. 2009 ). The retreat of mountain
glaciers is one of the indications that certain sub systems of the earth are moving out
of their relatively stable Holocene state, and into the anthropocene (Crutzen 2002 ;
Rockström et al. 2009 ). Global freshwater consumption has moved from a pre-
industrial value of 415 km 3 per year to 2,600 km 3 per year, which while it may fall
under its proposed planetary boundary, is tightly coupled with other boundaries in
the system. Our ability to stay within the climate boundary may depend on stopping
the transgression of the freshwater boundary and vice versa, since all of them are
conceived as 'bio-physical preconditions for human development…and well-being'
(Rockström et al. 2009 , p 474).
1 Co-operative Programme on Water and Climate (CPWC); Netherlands Commission for
Environmental Assessment (MER); Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM); Netherlands
Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL).