Addressing the Challenge of Institutional Infrastructure in a Technically Focussed World - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 325

governance system that perhaps allow greater scope and flexibility for amendment
and revision as new information or new conditions emerge.
Decisions on which particular aspects of these indicators to focus on would need
to be made based upon local and expert analysis and judgement. Other studies that
have taken a traffic light approach have also emphasised the importance of context
when weighting adaptive capacity indicators or criteria (Gupta et al. 2010 ) , under-
lining the need for any decisions taken on such an indicator tool to be embedded
with contextual meaning as well as local insights and understanding. Therefore,
such judgements would not only take into account the performance of the system
according to the indicators, but also an understanding of which positive or negative
indicators could best contribute to resolving either baseline (sustainable water man-
agement) or climate related (uncertainty, extreme events based) issues within the
particular case. While future assessments could therefore still include the full suite
of indicators for the three overarching categories, specific indicators and
sub-indicators may be focussed on in more depth according to the particular needs
of individual cases (whether basins, institutions, and local, regional or national case
areas).
In the Chilean case, Regime related indicators are highlighted as the area of the
governance system detracting from adaptive capacity the most. However, regime
related challenges in the system are also perhaps the most intractable to resolve.
So, pinpointing areas of Knowledge and Network related indicators (e.g. strengthen-
ing and better enabling expertise and knowledge systems already in place, and
developing stronger networks that go across public and private spheres around these
information systems) that could make more of a difference, faster, could provide not
only baseline but also climate related benefits. In Switzerland, performance across
the indicators is more positive, but again Regime related indicators of ownership and
effectiveness are highlighted as detracting most from adaptive capacity. The role
that Network related indicators have to play (especially trust building in the collabo-
ration indicator) in remediating challenges in effective deployment of federal and
cantonal provisions for more transformative adaptation measures, delineates the
potentially reinforcing nature of these different categories as highlighted in other
studies (Gupta et al. 2010 ) .
One of the defining aspects of two case areas is the presence or absence of trust.
In Switzerland trust is seen to broadly function, despite certain intra-jurisdictional
challenges, while in Chile levels of both institutional and individual trust are
identified as low (view collaboration indicators in the Network category). However,
tackling issues of mistrust is particularly challenging, as well as dependant on
whether relationships need to be mended between individuals or different institu-
tional contexts or levels. This is an area of research that warrants further investiga-
tion, perhaps drawing on discourses relating to the fields of psychology and
behavioural sciences.
Another notably important aspect of the indicators across both cases relates to
matching expertise and knowledge with a willingness to learn (used in this study as
an input in the perceptions indicators in the Knowledge category) and from there a
conversion from learning to action (used in this study as an output in terms of the