Assessing Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 285

Swiss case is defined by more transformative and persistent adaptive outcomes,
Fig. 13.2 highlights the areas of rule making and division of responsibility that
remain a challenge.
For some of the indicators highighted as mixed in purple, there was a wide range
of fulfillments. In terms of Transparency, the indicator has very mixed examples in
both cases, but the Swiss case was more positive than the Chile. Levels of Decision
Making was also mixed with negative criteria in the Chilean case, as was Institutional
Integration in the Swiss case. The synthesis presented could also be a useful tool to
help guide decision makers on where resources would be best used to address ele-
ments of the governance system that hinder adaptive capacity and where to foster
elements that enable adaptive capacity.
Pinpointing the different indicators that are problematic (orange shaded indica-
tors), and specifying the sub-indicators, as presented in Tables 13.1 , 13.2 , and 13.3 ,
could help direct resources to repair problematic points of the governance framework
and better utilise enabling elements. The following section of discussion will elabo-
rate the particular tensions that emerged from the analysis of adaptive capacity and
highlight how the operationalised indicators can help address the implicit trade-offs.
The discussion of the trade-offs across different scales of governance and change will
be followed by the further development of a framework or tool to guide decision mak-
ers on how to address both proactive and reactive elements of adaptive capacity. By
better understanding the governance components of both sets of responses, the aim is
to allow water managers and decision makers not only to generate more transforma-
tive approaches that would not limit future choices, but also to foster reactive parts of
the system necessary for smaller and faster transformations in extreme events.

13.3 Part III Conclusion

Investigating adaptive capacity through the exploration of the governance related
adaptive responses in relation to extreme events, allowed greater focus on the ten-
sions and trade-offs implicit in not only anticipatively developing the capacity to
manage and cope with environmental and climate variability, but also in mobilising
that capacity in reaction to stresses as they manifest. Categorising these responses
in terms of their transformative, persistent or passive adaptation characteristics
enables linkages to be assigned between certain governance approaches and mecha-
nisms with greater transformative potential.
In Chap. 10 , it was found that more transformative responses were associated
with the following governance mechanisms:

Regime

- Mix of federal legislation and cantonal legislation setting the framework for the

most transformational elements of the TRC (integration of uncertainty and cli-
mate information, integrated risk management based on social-ecological
resilience).