The Assessment of Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 64

climate system, then one may insinuate that the learning generated through
better understanding adaptive processes (rather than steady state resource
management processes) should help decision makers better assess and develop
responses to larger state changes. Therefore, concerning tensions and trade-
offs across different scales, the assumption is that adaptations to current vari-
ability and experience of extremes should enable capacity to develop to longer
term threats and challenges from climate change, but that inter-jurisdictional
challenges and dynamics might hinder coherent adaptation.
Many studies have centered on theoretical development and in turn have been
loaded with the assumption that these governance arrangements are desirable or
key to increasing adaptive capacity. A common approach has been to define the key
indicators and relevant policy or management prescriptions needed for adaptive
capacity to be mobilised and then characterise how they are present within the
system analysed (Adger et al. 2005 ; Brooks et al. 2005 ; Eakin and Lemos 2006 ;
Smit and Wandel 2006 ; Yohe and Tol 2002 ; Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007c ; Huntjens et al.
2010 ). It is a highly inductive approach that has partly led to a gap between theory
and practice in establishing links between various water governance approaches
and proven positive results in managing water resources in reality (Medema et al.
2008 ). Increasing the number of empirical studies in contrasting governance set-
tings on the mobilisation and measurement of adaptive capacity can in part assist
in addressing this gap. However, there are still few deep empirical examples explor-
ing adaptive actions in periods that might be representative of a future warmer
world, or even in attempting to measure the role of these approaches to support the
theoretical assumptions. One aim of this topic is to contribute to closing this gap.

4.6 Summary

The academic discourse on climate change adaptation in the water sector has seen a
gradual realisation that hard path technical approaches (Gleick 2003 ) must be better
balanced with soft path solutions, that also focus more on the enabling social infra-
structure (governance, institutions, management) requisite for successful adaptive
approaches (Pahl-Wostl 2007 ). Governance clearly plays a critical role in develop-
ing more adaptive and sustainable water management. Heightened vulnerability can
erode resilience and so impede institutions from facilitating adaptation or resulting
in maladaptation. Yet while the vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience frameworks
are apt for defining the challenges that governance regimes face, their vulnerability
in meeting those challenges, and the solutions to overcoming those challenges, they
deal more with what those outcomes should look like than how they should be
achieved; which is addressed by the concept of adaptive capacity.
While there are increasingly numerous calls for water governance and associated
management institutions to be resilient and robust towards future uncertainty and
climate change impacts, there is room for deeper discussion on what desirable outcomes
would look like. As adaptation responses are shaped, it is important to question