Assessing Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 282

Table 13.3 (continued)

Case example
Chile Network indicators Operationalisation Switzerland

Agency &
Autonomy :
Relative agency
and autonomy
of sectors and
levels enables
challenges to be
resolved.

Limits to public authorities' ability to actively
manage or regulate water resources; state
has a subsidiary role in water management,
which is in the hands of the private water
rights holders; water users have indepen-
dence and autonomy and the role of
denouncing illegal extraction or pollution
to the DGA; centralist bureaucracy is
sidestepped in rights registration and
bypassed by private actor negotiations,
agreements and adaptive actions to cope
with periods of drought; DGA unable to
affect property rights, therefore emphasis
is on users to self-organise to resolve
drought induced conflicts; in extreme
drought periods, government assistance
and intervention is at the request of the
irrigators.

Federal and cantonal governments have a subsidiary role in
water management at the commune level, limiting their
authority (right to redress) on water management across the
country and region; water decisions reside at the commune
public level, but are influenced by canton level coordina-
tion and support, particularly in communes where finances
or capacity is low; private user groups are gradually
morphing into public supported institutions; Increasingly
responsibility for maintenance of irrigation infrastructure is
shifting to public hand from the private, while canton is
taking more oversight over energy concessions; provisions
for participation in decision making at local, canton and
federal levels take time, but build consensus; Constitutional
Right to Petition allows for citizens to self-organise and
influence the direction of water management at a federal
level.

a Klein ( 2008 ) and Valdes ( 1995 )