Addressing the Challenge of Institutional Infrastructure in a Technically Focussed World - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 324

stakeholders into the tight communication and knowledge networks could be one
means of addressing the current challenges. In contrast, perceptions of being well
prepared for tougher climatic conditions in the Valais appears to have meant that
alternative solutions or management approaches are not currently being consid-
ered. In the Chilean case, the high impact recent drought events are potentially
providing a window of opportunity for a heightened level of self-questioning and
stakeholder collaboration to move beyond technical engineering solutions to
security and supply challenges, but to also better enable the institutional setting to
cope with increased drought impacts so that the resilience of the SES does not
further degrade. While the freedom and autonomy at the user level allows actors
to quickly react and find solutions to smaller issues, many of these coping tech-
niques have the potential for longer term degradation of the resilience of the
ecosystem.

16.3 Assessing Adaptive Capacity

The literature on adaptive capacity has progressed and grown exponentially in the
preceding decade, but significant challenges remain in developing rigorous, mea-
surable and transferable indicators of adaptive capacity. In this attempt to develop a
more empirically grounded and multi-pronged approach to understanding and
assessing adaptive capacity, some conclusions can be drawn not only on enduring
challenges, but also on how different indicators might be prioritised for different
contexts and scales. The research presented in this topic employed a tailored traffic
light (black to white) scheme to highlight positive, neutral, and negative fulfilment
of adaptive capacity indicators as well as forms of adaptive outcomes. While this
approach can clearly communicate those areas of the governance system that are
contributing positively or negatively to adaptive capacity within the case areas, it
perhaps provides less information on which indicators are the most important within
a certain context or across a range of contexts.
In terms of identifying certain indicators as being more or less important for
developing and mobilising adaptive capacity, some caution is called for so that con-
textual sensitivities remain at the forefront of analysis and interpretation. However,
some conclusions can be drawn to denote priority indicators across the different
areas at different stages of diagnosis. Broadly, in reflecting on the varying levels of
pertinence of the indicators and operationalised sub-indicators, it seems that those
indicators that relate more to the good governance discourse (namely, ownership,
accountability, responsibility, integration under the Regime category) could be
termed as baseline requirements for navigating to more sustainable water manage-
ment. However, as discussed in Chap. 13, it is these areas of the governance system
that can in fact represent the most intractable part of the problem. On the other
hand, those indicators that emerged through both the investigation and analytical
process (based more heavily on adaptation and resilience related discourses), related
more heavily to the Knowledge and Network categories and represent areas of the