Introduction

The Alps and the Andes—commonly considered “water towers” for their respective continents—will both be significantly and disproportionately affected by climate change (Beniston et al 2003; Nogués-Bravoa et al 2007). Climate change impacts on glacier retreat, precipitation patterns, snow lines, and associated changes in runoff regimes are already being observed in Alpine and Andean regions, and model projections suggest a continuation, if not heightening, of current trends (Pellicciotti et al 2007; Viviroli et al 2011). These impacts take on global relevance, because mountain regions are a major watershed resource for more than half of the world's population for hydroelectricity, drinking supplies, or other water resources (Grêt-Regamey et al 2012). With rising global water consumption (Molden et al 2007), sustainable and adaptable water management in these regions becomes increasingly critical.

As impacts of climate change are increasingly observed, climate resilient adaptation strategies are called for that reduce vulnerability and potentially increase the adaptive capacity of both social and ecological systems (Matthews et al 2011). Governance-related adaptive processes have thus become a key component for maneuvering toward more sustainable water resources management (Brooks et al 2005; Pahl-Wostl 2007). Effective water governance and management is seen as being at the heart of present and future water challenges and is considered crucial for building adaptive capacity to climate change (Brooks et al 2005; Nelson et al 2007): the ability to prepare for and respond to stresses from climate variability and climatic change stress (Engle 2011).

This paper intends to present new comparative empirical evidence on the adaptive capacity of 2 contrasting water governance regimes in the Swiss Alps and the Chilean Andes. The highly contrasting governance contexts reveal both similar and distinct challenges for institutions and actors to manage and respond to hydroclimatic events. The article aims to provide more insights into the challenges relating to temporal and spatial scales that governance regimes must navigate when they aim not only to manage hydroclimatic stresses and uncertainty but also to enable longer-term resilience to climate change impacts.

Background: adaptive capacity

Adaptive capacity is the ability of a system to adjust to changing internal demands and external circumstances (Carpenter and Brock 2008). Within a social system, adaptive capacity is defined as the capacity of actors (collectively or individually), to respond to, create, and shape variability and change in the state of the system (Adger et al 2005). Building and mobilizing adaptive capacity requires actors not only to be able to adapt reactively to and to cope with hydroclimatic shocks (e.g., floods and drought, interannual variability, and predictable uncertainty) but also to proactively plan for longer-term shocks (climate change impacts and increasing unpredictability and uncertainties) (Tompkins and Adger 2005).

Adaptive capacity is a central feature of resilience: it is the ability of a social–ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same fundamental structure, function, and identity (Carpenter and Brock 2008). Adaptive capacity should contribute to enhancing resilience rather than lead to adaptations that degrade resilience at different temporal and spatial scales. These challenges of scale are particularly relevant in mountain contexts because of the significant influence of external factors on both social and ecological aspects of mountain regions (Wiegandt 2008). Institutional and governance aspects, such as legislative and regulatory frameworks, policies, rights, and formal and informal institutions, have all been shown to be key determinants of building adaptive capacity and resilience at local, regional, and national levels (Adger et al 2005; Brooks et al 2005; Nelson et al 2007). Table 1 presents an overview of the determinants relating to governance that have been discussed as being important to the nature of adaptive capacity and to affecting the outcome of adaptive actions (Hill 2011).

TABLE 1

Overview of initial identification of governance and institutional determinants of adaptive capacity.

Some studies have begun to assess the nature and potential outcomes of adaptation policies and plans to better assess how they might be positioning the systems that they govern along a trajectory that can increase their resilience to a number of environmental challenges at different scales. Adger et al (2011) demonstrated that short-term adaptation actions in some cases are undermining long-term social–ecological resilience or resilience to another stressor. Adaptive capacity should therefore contribute to adaptations (adaptive actions and associated governance mechanisms) that enhance resilience, by sustaining and enhancing ecosystem services, societal development, and human wellbeing (Folke et al 2010), rather than degrade resilience, either through a failure to adapt or a maladaptation (Chapin et al 2009).

Methods: assessing adaptive capacity

This study draws on these bodies of work (adaptation, vulnerability, and resilience) to assess the Swiss and Chilean water governance system's ability to cope with climate change variability and change. It uses system responses to past climate variability (in this case, past extreme events) to enable the identification of system attributes that are key to different adaptive responses (Smit et al 2000) (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1

Analytical framework detailing causal mechanisms and methods.

After identifying key governance and institutional determinants of adaptive capacity (Table 1) in an initial literature review, a set of governance-related adaptive capacity indicators (Table 2) was operationalized and used to explore adaptive behavior within the context of the key extreme events identified.

TABLE 2

Overview of adaptive capacity indicators used to explore adaptive behavior in the context of extreme events.

For the purposes of this study, adaptive actions are seen as manifestations of adaptive capacity, represented by changes in the system that aim to deal with impacts from climate and environmental changes to which that system is vulnerable (Smit and Wandel 2006). Here, adaptive actions are defined as a response, institutional, or governance mechanism (law, regulation, policy, or institutional action; e.g., decisions or rules of user group associations) at national, regional, or local (both community and individual) scales that provides guidance or instruments for preparing or responding to different types of environmental phenomena (i.e., interannual variability, drought, floods, and climate change impacts). As a next analytical step, these actions were characterized by the governance scale at which they mainly took place, the reactive or proactive nature of the action, and the associated impacts on social and ecological resilience.

Qualitative data was collected through a series of semistructured stakeholder interviews with national, regional, and local water governance stakeholders and experts (Chile, n  =  34; Switzerland, n  =  29; see Supplemental data, Table S1;  http://dx.doi.org/10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-12-00106.S1, for more information on interviews across sectors and scales), participation in workshops (n  =  2), and archival data analysis (legislation and regulation, policy documents, journal articles, and gray literature). Both the interview and the archival data were coded using computer-assisted qualitative analysis software (MaxQDA) and then analyzed to assess the evidence according to the adaptive capacity indicators and the categories of adaptive action.

Case areas: governance and climate background

Table 3 provides an overview of the governance context and water resources background of each case area. The Aconcagua Basin in Region V, Chile, is experiencing increasing pressure on its water resources from both climatic and nonclimatic pressures, leading to heightened competition among users for water allocation (Pellicciotti et al 2007). The Aconcagua is one of the only basins in Chile not regulated by a major dam, with the reputation to date of having sufficient hydrological resources and highly suitable climatic qualities for agricultural production. As overexploitation and a diminishing contribution from snowpack and glacier melt is leading to a hydrological deficit, however, local actors have demanded that the Aconcagua River be more regulated, with the construction of 2 new dams and a battery of wells (Matta 2011).

TABLE 3

Background on system stresses and governance context for the case areas.

Studies in the region have shown that there has been a significant decrease in the annual and seasonal trends of runoff, related to decreasing contributions from glaciers and snow cover (Pellicciotti et al 2007). Compounded by increasing water abstractions, these impacts have led to a reduction in surface water recharge that tends to affect water rights in the medium and lower segments of the basin more severely (Desmadryl 2010). A number of droughts have affected the Aconcagua region in recent years, the most severe of which were in 1996–1997 and in 2010–2011. The Aconcagua is split into 4 sections, and not all sections of the basin are evenly affected by drought impacts because of the high hydrological and geographic diversity in the basin. Severe droughts have affected drinking water distribution and significantly reduced the availability of water rights to irrigators.

Climate change impacts are also being observed in the Upper Rhone Basin in Canton Valais in Switzerland, affecting glacier mass balance, snow cover, precipitation totals and intensity, and natural hazards, including geomorphological events (Beniston et al 2011). To date, stakeholders have viewed drought and scarcity impacts as being relatively minor in comparison to the recent experience of flooding events. For example, in 2003, despite the very low precipitation levels (a mean of 30%, according to MeteoSwiss data), water in the streams and rivers was plentiful from the record glacier melt (Huss 2011), meaning that the Valais experienced the opposite problem of that in the rest of Europe. However, local situations of scarcity were assigned to drier summers, leading to lower recharge levels in the springs. From the mid-1980s, a series of heavy precipitation events occurred at relatively short intervals, leading to major infrastructural damage and human casualties (Amweg 2011).

Results

This section first presents the main adaptive actions identified in each case area and then reviews the evidence according to the adaptive capacity indicators.

Adaptive actions

Across both cases, a number of key governance and institutional mechanisms were identified that were mobilized for, drawn on, or are relevant to preparing for or dealing with the case events in each case area, as shown in Table 4. To better indentify the type of adaptation occurring and its relationship to resilience at different scales, the adaptive actions in Table 4 are also characterized according to whether they are predominantly reactive or proaction mechanisms and whether they principally address climate variability (variability) or climate change impacts (change). This is further examined in the later discussion on scale.

TABLE 4

Adaptive actions categorized by scale and characterized according whether they are reactive or proactive, as well as addressing climate variability or climate change. (Table continued on next page.)

TABLE 4

Continued. (First part of Table 4 on previous page.)

Challenges of scale

By looking across the different responses across the cases, it can be seen that a number of adaptive responses are not necessarily enabling enhanced adaptability to mounting challenges from climate change impacts. Linked with this challenge is the emergent tension of balancing guidance and certainty from higher levels of governance with flexibility and autonomy of users and rights holders at lower scales. It is a challenge that is heightened in times of stress in the case areas, which instigate a heightened involvement of central or regional government agencies, whether from a financial or from an organizational capacity.

Figure 2 consolidates the evidence presented in Table 4 to depict the predominance of adaptive actions that are responding to challenges at a particular scale but not necessarily enabling an adaptive capacity to prepare for changes or impacts at other scales. Many of the adaptive actions implemented at local scales are associated with reactive approaches to historical variability, drought, and scarcity but are limited in terms of scaling up to face more complex challenges at greater magnitudes of climatic extremes (with the exception to this being the drought decree in Chile). However, the top-down, more proactive approaches associated with higher governance scales face major challenges in implementation at the local or basin level in both case areas. In Chile, there is gridlock because of disagreements over rights in the Aconcagua project. In Switzerland, challenges of passing the TRC implementation plan at the local level are linked to disputes over land rights (NZZ 2009).

FIGURE 2

Examples showing the challenge of developing and mobilizing adaptive capacity to manage issues relating to different scales of change, as indicated by the multiple and sometimes competing scales at which adaptive actions are operating in each case. The double-ended arrow indicates the potential linkages and tradeoffs among these scales.

While both reactive and proactive approaches are of fundamental importance to adaptive capacity, case evidence, from Chile in particular, shows how a number of reactive approaches also lead to further depletion of increasingly vulnerable resources (e.g., increased groundwater exploitation and water transfers). Present coping techniques are therefore potentially degrading resilience of aquatic resources and ecosystems in the long run and in some cases are no longer seen as sufficient in the face of increasing levels and frequencies of drought.

Conclusion

Mountain regions where runoff is dominated by snow and ice are projected to experience significant shifts in hydroclimatic contexts that their governance systems will need to effectively cope with and adapt to (Beniston et al 2011). By looking across the different responses in these cases, it can be seen that a number of adaptive responses are not necessarily enabling enhanced adaptability to mounting challenges from climate change impacts. This problem can also be linked with the tension between balancing guidance and certainty from higher levels of governance on the one hand and flexibility and autonomy of users and rights holders at lower scales on the other. This calls for more investigation into how short-term adaptation actions may potentially be undermining long-term social–ecological resilience (Adger et al 2011), particularly in the multiscale and multisector policy context that frames adaptation, mitigation, and water resource management in mountain regions. While in recent years bottom-up approaches have been favored in the literature on adaptation, the present findings support other recent conclusions (Huntjens et al 2010) that more attention should be paid to how best to balance top-down and bottom-up approaches.

Water managers and stakeholders in these 2 case areas live in the shadow of “darkening peaks” (Orlove et al 2008), and both case areas demonstrate a high awareness of climate change impacts. However, discussion of the case evidence has shown that despite high awareness of climate change impacts in these regions, issues relating to water resources management information and a lack of trust and cooperation among stakeholders (across sectors and across governance scales) block larger-scale and longer-term solution building to overcoming complex challenges. These cases delineate the importance of building trust in enabling more adaptive governance and collective action for cooperative solutions to resource management challenges (Poteete et al 2010). A major challenge for both case areas is to shift the predominantly individual form of flexibility to one that is more cohesive for the generation of longer-term adaptive responses.

Acknowledgements of larger-scale changes are tempered either by apathy in the face of the scale of change or by perceptions that these changes will impact the next generation. However, the laws, contracts, and infrastructural projects that are being planned now will need to be relevant and adequate in 10 to 20 years, when the impacts of climate change will become more acute in mountains. Decisions made now could lock these communities into out-of-date rules, data, and infrastructure just as the agreements, projects, and contracts signed 20 to 80 years ago have locked in present-day management in both case areas (hydropower concession periods, water rights allocations, urban growth, and spatial planning). Both cases underline the need for water managers and policymakers to consider institutional aspects of adaptation as much as infrastructural aspects in climate change adaptation policy and planning. This could ensure that money and resources are not wasted on investments that may not resolve the key issues concerning water allocation and water resources management. Great effort to identify and resolve challenges in the social infrastructure might alleviate pressure on hard adaptations that are difficult to reverse in the future.

Finally, the threats that menace these precious mountain water resources because of climate change are also likely to have fundamental impacts on downstream uses and different economic sectors (Sundseth et al 2005). The adaptive capacity of mountain regions to climate change impacts is therefore significant not only for mountain communities but also for actors and communities at different spatial scales. It is therefore of high importance to ensure that adaptive actions happening at one scale (be it highland or lowland) are not degrading the resilience of other components of the social or ecological systems.

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