Environmental Engineering Reference
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constitute hard infrastructural adaptations (e.g. reservoirs and wells), connections
between different actors tend to be based on financial or economic incentives alone,
with no other glue binding actors together (i.e. basin planning for a stable and
sustainable system is lacking). The development of the Mesa Tecnica de Aconcagua
in relation to the Aconcagua Project provides a platform for those in favour of the
project to share information and present supporting findings to the DGA and other
stakeholders in the basin. Elsewhere in Chile, Mesa del Agua have been set up
as watershed boards, in a set of pilot projects developed by the DGA in the past
decade (Bio Bio, Huasco, Copiapo 1 ). However, these institutions have failed to
incorporate the full suite of watershed stakeholders, reducing their ability to effec-
tively build cooperation across divergent views but instead the opposing viewpoints
in the Aconcagua Project and related groundwater management issues are as deeply
entrenched as ever.
In the Swiss case, the networks that do exist tend to be sector specific, but based
more on intentions of knowledge and expertise development than on specific proj-
ects. The TRC is perhaps one area where participation has taken a consultative
form, in that the implementation plan was presented to the COREPILs post facto,
and approval or commentary requested on a seemingly done deal, to the chagrin of
agricultural stakeholders who stand to lose land as a consequence of the enlarge-
ment (NZZ 2009 ). An earlier inclusion of affected stakeholders into the implemen-
tation process through communication and information networks, as they exist for
water provision and other mountain water challenges, may have allowed a better
understanding for the benefits that such an enlargement could bring in the long run,
rather than the short term implications of land loss.
Across these different administrative or spatial scales, too strong a commitment
and concentration of governance actions, rules or autonomy at one level, whether it
be higher or lower, can be seen to hamper the response at another level, eroding the
fine balance that could enable more coherent adaptation strategies. The role of
incentives and trust building in networks highlights the importance of balancing out
mismatches in authority, autonomy and agency (see Part III, Chap. 12 ) to ensure
that diverse stakeholders across the complex system have the right incentives to
move collectively towards more integrated and adaptive approaches. Moreover,
building more effective and functional networks across these administrative and
sector scales is particularly relevant to water institutions because of the imbalances
of natural and economic resources between upstream and downstream water users
(especially notable in the Chilean case in the disagreements between the different
Juntas).
The importance of balancing lower and higher levels of governance authority is
matched by other recent research, reinforcing the empirical evidence that bottom-up
governance and decentralisation is not as vital a characteristic for adaptive and
1 MOP, Unidad Técnica, Programa de Manejo de Recursos Hídricos a Nivel de Cuencas
Hidrográficas (PMRH), proyecto MOP-BM, volumen 1, informe, Santiago, 5 de febrero de 2001
(Dourojeanni 2010 ) .
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