Addressing the Challenge of Institutional Infrastructure in a Technically Focussed World - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 323

accountability in water governance (see Part I), while the empirical findings across
both cases highlighted the issues from locking ownership and use rights into codified
norms that are based on out of date hydrological data and patterns. This is a chal-
lenge that is further heightened in times of stress in the case areas, during which
there is an intensified involvement of central or regional government agencies.
Conversely, there is a need to recognise local individualities and needs, which can
go unconsidered at higher levels of administration, participative processes used to
address this dichotomy can also stall agreements on projects and frustrate multiple
stakeholders, especially if not matched with requisite knowledge and information
assets.
Across Governance/Spatial Scale
While proactive adaptive capacity can be associated with predictability and guid-
ance at higher levels, reactive capacity is enabled through flexibility and autonomy
at lower governance levels. One of the major challenges in climate change adapta-
tion is therefore navigating this balance between fostering the flexibility needed to
deal with an increase in the likelihood of complex and unexpected changes from
climate change while maintaining the certainty and guidance for longer term pre-
paredness through legislative, regulatory and policy frameworks. In the Swiss case,
a strong level of autonomy at the local level challenges transformative policy priori-
ties and federal and cantonal legislation at higher levels. In Chile however, the
autonomy at the user level (rather than municipality) is coupled with a lack of guid-
ance or regulating force pulling actors in the same direction.
Across Temporal Scale/Scale and Speed of Change
While balancing flexibility and predictability is important for addressing the chal-
lenges between structure and autonomy across administrative scales, it is equally
important to address adaptation to and preparedness for different scales of change.
A community or system's adaptiveness to local climate conditions may not imply an
ability to cope with changes or impacts at different speeds or scales, as is evident
across both cases. The adaptive actions associated with historical variability, drought
and scarcity are limited in terms of upscaling to face more complex challenges.
Furthermore, in the Swiss case, perceptions of being well prepared to tougher cli-
matic conditions in the Valais (in comparison to other areas of Switzerland) appear
to lull sectors, such as agriculture in particular, into a false sense of security that
managing climate impacts will not require alternative solutions or management
approaches.
In the Swiss case, while the windows of opportunity that the flooding events
opened were capitalised on, the rapid fading of the memory of those impacts
highlights the importance of knowledge indicators, to ensure that both individual
and institutional memory is maintained. Extending and integrating opposing