Operationalising Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 258

year, while federal research institutes such as EAWAG collaborate on studies and
dissemination with the communes.
The canton agricultural administration (Amt für Strukturverbesserung) also plays
a role in encouraging (and subsidising through federal assistance) the maintenance
of traditional water management structures at local levels, as a stakeholder explained:
'They are trying to support/encourage the maintenance of these organisations
because they assist in the upkeep of the infrastructure/minimise costs at the local
level. In the old system, the whole village was implicated in the management of the
water and the canals. Whether you took water from the top of the canal or bottom of
the canal, you still needed to work the same to maintain it - it fostered a unique soli-
darity. Grundeigenturm still stay with the land. The canton is providing subsidies to
maintain the canals and the geteilschaft' . The canton reduces the increasing financial
and capacity burden upon them by fostering flexible conflict resolution mechanisms
that are less costly than judicial or administrative routes, while also maintaining
responsibilities for the upkeep of traditional infrastructure (that plays an important
role during extreme precipitation events as well as the summer irrigation season).
The investment projects on the Suonen, however, did not have any impact on reduc-
ing water demand.
Despite the examples of cooperation and collaboration, Chap. 5 discussed the
challenges of coordination and integration across the Valais for the different facets
and scales of water resources management. In direct relation to hazards (climate
related or no) the crisis management groups, functioning at the commune level,
indicate strong coordination across the different sectors and stakeholders, to ensure
that emergency responses to hazards are well-prepared and structured. The TRC
represents an attempt to better coordinate horizontally across stakeholder interests
and vertically from the federal level to the commune level of implementation. The
federal administration is eager to create coherence in hydraulic engineering projects
across the country under the 'Loi des Course d'Eau', so that the provisions relating
to ecosystem health and integrated risk management may be better adhered to.
The same approach is being taken at the canton level for natural hazards, where
a stakeholder explained that 'the idea is to create important synergies across each
domain with a relation to natural hazards and create a more uniform approach (tech-
nically and financially) to the domain. Currently NH tasks are spread across the
DSFB and the DWL. Reorganization would foster an integrated strategy for long
term protection, the application of principles of precaution and causality and a uni-
form concept of safety. It would remove duplication of effort and therefore reduce
time and cost inefficiencies. The briefing note is asking the Conseil d'Etat to rethink
how the section is organised' . The pressure of more frequent and intense hydrologi-
cal events has pushed federal and canton levels to better coordinate across institu-
tional boundaries, to differing degrees of success.
The financial incentives provided by the federal government aim to encourage an
implementation of the TRC that reflects the legal guidelines in canton and federal
legislation. The commune's reliance on subsidies is a key tool of authority for the
higher levels of administration, enabling the canton and federal government to craft
responses and projects that integrate the more progressive elements of the law that