Balancing Structural Con fl icts Across Scales to Develop and Mobilise Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 294

Fig. 14.2 Seasonal timeline of water uses ( White arrows show the range of traditional water uses,
and black arrows showing how these rivalries are developing with shifting seasonality and increas-
ing exploitation)
allocations and priorities over timescales during which the hydro-climatic
environment is projected to undergo significant change.
Figure 14.2 represents the complexities that shifting seasonality might imply for
such long term codified rights, guaranteeing or prioritising allocation to certain
users over or during set time periods (Hydropower Concessions, Law on the Use of
Hydropower (Art. 42), WPA (Arts. 31, 33, 34 and 36)). It shows that there is genu-
ine cause for concern, in that the multiple rivalries of the streams are gradually
being subjected to either physical changes in seasonality or through increased vari-
ability, demand and new legislative requirements that are at present not being inves-
tigated in an integrated or holistic manner. While some stakeholders express concern
that these increasing rivalries will be a challenge for management of water resources
in the canton, it is presently still under the radar of cantonal legislators and sectoral
policy makers.
Furthermore, any diminishment of spring water (for domestic supply) in relation
to glacier melt is likely to be supplemented with increased groundwater exploitation
that may have repercussions on surface water recharge. In the Valais, these chal-
lenges are in some way bridged by the complex balance of strong local autonomy
and sovereignty of water rights with an increasing reliance on federal and cantonal
subsidies that aim to encourage implementation of federal and cantonal ecosystem
based provisions at the local level to foster a resilience based approach to increasing
hydrological extremes. However, the residual flow requirements themselves are a
more recent addition to the WPA, and so despite the importance of their role in the
protection of the riparian ecosystem and health of the waterways, do have challenging
repercussions for socio-economic based rivalries.