Assessing Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 273

Chile Switzerland

Communication :
Communicating
relevant informa-
tion for extreme
periods and
capacity building.

Lack of education and communication on water
conservation; personal and public communication on
drought preparation, advice provision from JdV
presidents on managing irrigation and crop production
in drought periods.

Detailed communication of TRC through online
communications, newsletters and participative fora
to explain the justifications for why it is necessary
to intervene on the watercourses, and to secure the
plain. Attempts at canton level to be more
pre-emptive in their communication with
municipal level stakeholders. Local press and
media used to communicate water supply
provisions during scarcity periods and warnings
during emergency flooding events. MINERVE
convention provides for public communication
during extreme events. Canton is legally required
to ensure communication on habitation in
hazardous areas and where houses can be built
(flood and avalanche protection).

Perceptions Awareness :

Awareness of
climate change
impacts.

Observational awareness from irrigators and water
managers that climate is changing, with reduced snow
pack, melting glaciers and precipitation changes, but
lack of popular awareness on water conservation;
Acknowledgement that climate impacts will heighten
and hydrological resources will be increasingly
diminished; DGA/Presidential acceptance of climate
challenge.

Observations of change in the local climate (tempera-
ture, snow pack, timing of snow melt, glacier
retreat, isotherm, permafrost) heighten the
awareness of rate of climate change. In the region,
engagement on climate is higher in the winter
tourism and hydropower sector, where increasing
glacier melt heightens hydropower production but
increases material flows, in the reservoirs than in
water provision, where communes mainly use
non-concession spring water and there is a strong
perception of Valais as the 'water tower' of
Europe. Preparations for one scale of change (dry
summers, glacier melt) but apathy towards more
drastic ones (glacier disappearance, water
scarcity).

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