Assessing Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 281

Network indicators Operationalisation Chile Switzerland

Power & Balance :
Balance across
institutional
relationships.

Media and press articles used to influence
decision making on rights allocation and
the Aconcagua project; rights administra-
tion disagreements between DOH &
irrigators and the DGA; power struggles
between CNR and MOP, DOH and DGA,
DGA and MMA reduces efficacy of
coordination and roles - relationship
changes from one administration to the
next; strength and independence of
powerful economic actors, and their
infiltration into political, academic and
judicial decision making.

Shifting roles and responsibilities across private and public
spaces (in agriculture to public and in flood defence to
private) according to diminishing and rising capacity;
competing policy priorities across sectors (e.g. micro-
hydropower versus environmental flows provisions) with
no overview or integration into TRC; agricultural and
hydropower stakeholders at odds against the ecologicalisa-
tion of water management at canton and federal levels;
communes are independent and autonomous from canton
and federal administrations, but are subject to canton and
federal laws, and reliant on subsidies and support.

Levels of decision
making

Administrative
Authority :
Relative
authority at
different
administrative
levels enables
challenges to be
resolved.

Centralist government with high degree of
Presidential powers and priority setting
(e.g. Presidential decision required on
projects, drought declaration etc.);
Presidential interventions on project
approval; regional branches (operational
level) of ministries handcuffed by planning
and policy decisions by national bodies
(political level) and planning offices
(MIDEPLAN) in Santiago (seen as'King'),
with lack of effective feedback mechanism
between central and regional authorities;
Courts have authority to define precedents
in the implementation of the Water Code,
thereby retain a powerful role in water
'management'; canal and JdV actors
express 'powerlessness' against govern-
ment institutions.

Decentralised system of federalism, with role of implementa-
tion at canton level, and in the Valais, the communes are
particularly autonomous; subsidies for following ecologi-
cal and security priorities of the 2001 Federal Directive for
watercourse management is key for balancing the
autonomy of decision making at the commune level
(subsidised up to 95 % for Gefahrenkarte, ZonenPlan,
Bauzone etc. ) enabling canton and federal environmental
agencies to ensuring the implementation of priority
policies and concepts; canton administrations are
responsible for sectoral coordination and support, but
communes for implementation, with technical and financial
support from canton; Valais, as a relatively poor canton is
reliant on federal subsidies.

(continued)