Operationalising Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 261

from environmental stakeholders in the aftermath of the agreement and a smoother
passage through the approval process. However, this level of negotiation is only
possible when all stakeholders are afforded an equal place at the table.
Leadership is an aspect of networks that have been shown in other studies to play
a role in driving water management systems to innovate and test out novel approaches
(Cook et al. 2011 ). In Chile, the challenges of trust building across different public
and private administrative bodies are in part linked to the issue of the informality
and lack of accountability or responsibility for water resources management (as
opposed to rights distribution). In the Swiss case, the role of environmental organi-
sations in challenging and changing the debate around water resources management
has had an impact in shifting water resources policy and legislation to a more inte-
grative approach.
The organisational leadership prescribed to environmental groups has been
reinforced by the linkages between them and prominent administrative figures and
technical experts in the cantonal administration in the development of the TRC
plan and other areas of innovation in water management at the canton level.
However, these networks tend to be weaker and once local user level stakeholders
are included (e.g. actor participation in the COREPIL) less knowledge exchange
based; and it is at this level that cohesion and collaboration in adaptation approach
breaks down. Perhaps, investing in the level and quality of knowledge sharing net-
works to the user level, instead of bringing the plans to them for consultation,
would be a means of establishing more functional networks across the policy-
implementation gap.
Further investigation into the role of leadership in developing new techniques
and innovation for climate relevant problems in water systems could be well served
by techniques such as social network analysis. A better understanding of the role
of leadership could also improve our understanding of the area managers and deci-
sion makers, might concentrate on to better navigate the bridges and barriers affect-
ing adaptive capacity of water governance. Other studies have investigated the role
of policy entrepreneurs 7 (NeWater) in terms of their ability to utilise windows of
opportunity to translate novel strategies proposed within shadow networks into
more mainstream approaches considered within formal policy arenas. These stud-
ies suggest that policy entrepreneurs provide a vital disruptive function in
change-resistant institutions, allowing policy change to incrementally lead to insti-
tutional change.
7 http://www.newater.info/index.php?pid=1056 - define policy entrepreneurs as (1) they anticipate
windows of opportunity by developing and testing attractive policy alternatives and demonstrating
their feasibility; (2) they employ strategies of venue manipulation, venue shopping and/or create
new venues to be able to insert new ideas, which have been developed in shadow networks, into
formal decision making forums, and (3) they use narratives or other discursive strategies to frame
an issue strategically, and by that to attract supporters and justify change.