Adaptive Capacity, Adaptive Governance and Resilience - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 29

Fig. 3.1 The shifting focus of water governance solutions: The left side of the graph represents
temperature ranges from the previous 150 years, while the right hand side represents future
temperature projections according to a range of emission scenarios. The black arrows on the left
and right depict the range of uncertainty associated with the two different ranges of climatic
conditions, underlining the need for scholars to better understand adaptive processes that seek to
embrace, rather than control uncertainty
unable to apply prior lessons to current problems (Ostrom et al. 1999 ) , especially
where these risks are outside of the range of both human and ecological frames of reference
(e.g. impacts related to droughts, heat waves and glacier loss) (Parry et al. 2007 ) .
Good governance systems are likely to have greater capacity to cope with climatic
changes than poor governance systems, but both may struggle to develop and adapt
existing coping mechanisms to more intense and frequent droughts or floods.
For example, while governance systems may have had mechanisms to cope with
issues such as seasonal or decadal drought or flooding, this might not imply the abil-
ity to adapt these coping techniques to more frequent or intense droughts or floods
in relation to climate change impacts. Climate change can therefore be seen as
attenuating threats that exacerbates other economic, developmental and environ-
mental challenges relating to the governance of water resources.
This convergence of issues has therefore changed the questions that need to be
asked and the frames of analysis by which we evaluate the ability of water gover-
nance arrangements to manage resources efficiently and effectively (Fig. 3.1 ), while
simultaneously respecting the ecological constraints and social realities in which
they must operate. While water managers, farmers, dam operators and other water
resource stakeholders have long dealt with changes and stresses relating to climate
variation, the projected speed and development of anthropogenic climate change