Addressing the Challenge of Institutional Infrastructure in a Technically Focussed World - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 335

Finally, there are some lessons that the adaptation community (both researchers
and practitioners) can perhaps learn from the natural world with which it is pre-
occupied. Individual, institutional and political willingness to change and adjust to
change has a fundamental role to play in transitioning to more adaptable governance
systems that can manage water sustainably in the world of the anthropocene.
Creativity is likely to play a large role in enabling innovation in governance transi-
tions. In the field of Zoology, researchers have pinpointed the importance of play in
problem-solving and conflict resolution in bonobo apes society (Behncke Izquierdo
2011 ). 'Play is our adaptive wildcard, it helps us adapt to an increasingly complex
and challenging world through greater creativity and cooperation…in order to suc-
cessfully adapt to a changing world, we need to play' (Behncke Izquierdo 2011 ) .
The focus on play for these zoologists is in part captured by the call for more flexible
and iterative integration of knowledge, information and learning in the field of adap-
tive governance to enhance the generation of more innovative responses for increas-
ingly complex problems.
Designers, in the fields of architecture, products and services have increasingly
been drawing inspiration from the ecology (McDonough and Braungart 2002 ) .
Some designers have taken inspiration from ecology for application to institutional
design to challenge the human search for hierarchical structure by drawing lessons
from alternative modes of connection (e.g. the non-hierarchical fungal mat connec-
tions between Aspen Trees in the US) (Fulton Suri 2011 ). In a similar manner to
resilience theory, it suggests that lessons can be learnt from natural processes to
organise social structures in a way that builds cohesive action. Fulton Suri ( 2011 )
presses the need for institutional design to learn from and mirror the inter-connect-
edness of the natural world in the very institutions that we construct to manage it.
Increased monitoring and observation of governance and intuitional indicators
could enable policy makers to better account for the interconnections in complex
systems, and thus foster governance and institutional frameworks that can accom-
modate the climate related challenges of increasingly unpredictable and indetermi-
nate uncertainties.
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