Addressing the Challenge of Institutional Infrastructure in a Technically Focussed World - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 331

mountain communities of the Valais face from this set of environmental and socio-
economic transitions that are presently taking shape.
Recently, Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard (Head of the Department of the
Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications, DETEC) commented at the
Swiss Forum for Sustainable Development that 'Switzerland's metropolitan, urban,
rural, tourist and Alpine spaces all have different strengths and functions. They
make Switzerland what it is. It is therefore important to think, plan and act in terms
of functional spaces. And that is something which demands greater international
cooperation' (DuPasquier 2011 ). Her comments speak to the on-going challenge to
find the balance between preservation and development in Swiss governance par-
ticularities, in finding the balance between strengthening traditions that worked in
the past, while recognising the aspects that must change in order to face the complex
multi-scale challenges that local communities are increasingly coming up against.
At the local level this is in part being tackled through the enhancing and expand-
ing networks across different communes and more intermittently outside the canton
and that represents a transition of these alpine communities from closed off units
(within which there was cooperation and common property) to a more integrated
region for adapting to more complex (i.e. global scale) challenges. It mirrors evi-
dence on developing social resilience from other case areas, such as the case of
Trinidad and Tobago in Tompkins and Adger ( 2004 ). These societies or communi-
ties that have a high dependence on resources vulnerable to climate change not only
show a tendency to spread their risk (i.e. integrating more villages into one water
provision area), but also to extend their 'spaces of engagement to enable them to
find a wider support network' (Tompkins and Adger 2004 ). These spaces of engage-
ment and communities of practice provide an opportune arena for accurate knowl-
edge concerning the development of precipitation, drought and scarcity situations
(currently being developed across different research consortia) to be applied to the
negotiation and development of different sets of water agreements, including use
prioritisation and integrated land and flood management.
An area that policy makers at the federal level could perhaps focus on would
therefore be to better link their own agenda and developing strategies with not only
the regional but also the local level communities. This need not imply more technical
or financial support, and these routes could also provide an arena for increased con-
nectedness given the increasing reliance on state assistance and finances. Rather,
more creative strategies to link up with, but not impose top down control, with the
communities of practice that are being formed across local and regional levels might
allow a more cohesive, proactive and cooperative approach for preparing for win-
dows of opportunity, so that when periods of stress arise in the future the groundwork
has already been made to adopt more transformational approaches. Investing a por-
tion of financial capacity and time in enhancing cooperation across these different
scales and sectors could contribute to speedier and smoother passage of the increas-
ingly costly protection projects anticipated over the coming decade (Meier 2011 ) .
Chile is characterised by complex contradictions, a centralist neo-liberal state,
where the rule of the Water Code meant most interviewees consulted the Code
directly during the interview, yet enforcement of it is negligible. Proponents of the