Margot Hill

Reducing vulnerability to climate change in the Swiss Alps: a study of adaptive planning

The Swiss Alps will experience pronounced effects of climate change due to the combination of their latitudinal positioning, altitude and unique ecosystems, placing socio-economic stresses on alpine communities, many of which rely on seasonal tourism. Studies into tourism adaptation within the Swiss Alps have so far focused on the technical adaptation options of alpine stakeholders, rather than perceptions of adaptation to climate change at the operational and community level. This article investigates attitudes to adaptation in two alpine regions within Switzerlands well-established decentralized political framework, through semi-structured qualitative interviews. Stakeholders focused almost entirely on maintaining the status quo of winter tourism, through technical or marketing measures, with mixed attitudes towards climatic impacts. A matrix based on the relative internal strengths and weaknesses, external opportunities and threats of adaptation measures (a SWOT framework) was used to assess the measures and suggest how stakeholders could capitalize on the new opportunities thrown up by climate change to create a competitive advantage. A comprehensive and collaborative planning approach is vital to enable policy makers and stakeholders to maximize opportunities, minimize the adverse effects of climate change on the local economy, and develop inclusive adaptation measures that benefit the entire region in order to create more sustainable social, economic and environmental structures.

Adaptive Capacity of Water Governance: Cases From the Alps and the Andes

Abstract The Alps and the Andes are both considered water towers in their respective continents and are thus significant not only for their own water needs but also for those of lowland regions farther downstream. As climate change impacts on the hydrology of mountain regions are increasingly observed, attention is turning to the adaptive capacity of the water governance regimes in mountain communities. This paper explores the adaptive capacity of two contrasting water governance regimes in the Swiss Alps and the Chilean Andes. It assesses adaptive capacity by analyzing a set of governance-related adaptive capacity indicators in the context of recent extreme events, which serve as proxies for future climate change. Across these highly contrasted governance contexts, analysis reveals both similar and distinct institutional challenges for developing and mobilizing adaptive capacity in relation to climatic uncertainty and change. It also identifies emergent tensions related to temporal and spatial scales. Conclusions point to the need to focus on challenges relating to trust, integration of hydroclimatic information, and flexibility and iterativity of rules and plans across governance scales to better manage the exacerbating impacts of both climate variability and climate change.

Converging threats: assessing socio‐economic and climate impacts on water governance

Purpose – It is increasingly recognised that water will be the prime medium through which climate change impacts will be felt. But water governance issues are already deemed to be a prime cause of a global water issues. Not only will climate change affect the function and operation of existing water infrastructure and institutions but additionally, current frameworks may not be robust enough to cope with climate change impacts. Effective water governance is seen as essential to building adaptive capacity in communities to manage future climatic uncertainty and stress. The purpose of this paper is to assess socio‐economic and climate impacts on water governance.Design/methodology/approach – As a first step in assessing adaptive capacity of two river basins, this paper explores current vulnerabilities in a Swiss water governance arrangement, and then proposes the subsequent implications for water resource management within a climate change context. It presents results from a governance assessment in the spe...

Water Governance in the Context of IWRM: Switzerland

This chapter outlines the work completed for the ACQWA project on the governance assessments for the Chilean and Swiss case area and is used to provide vital background to the water governance situation and challenges in the Swiss case area. In the Swiss case, despite the fulfilment of accountability, transparency and participation indicators, the assessment suggested that there is a significant gap between the conceptual strands of IWRM in federal laws and policies and their translation at the regional and local levels. The complex institutional framework, legislative provisions and levels of sovereignty which govern water resources in the Canton Valais implied a lack of coordination and long term planning amongst the different politico administrative levels and sector groups. These challenges are linked to concerns that the ramifications of climate change and expanding water uses are not adequately reflected in the current governance framework.

A Starting Point: Understanding Governance, Good Governance and Water Governance

Governance has been a widely and deeply discussed concept in the political sciences. As global freshwater resources have become increasingly degraded and impacts of climate change begin to take hold on local hydrological systems, scholars and practitioners have increasingly recognised a crisis of governance. This chapter presents a broad overview of governance theories and discusses the shifts from state centric notions of ‘government’ to a wider range of governance modes and types, as a way of contextualising the shift from a ‘command and control’ paradigm in water governance to more decentralised, integrated and flexible approaches.

The Assessment of Adaptive Capacity

This chapter reviews the methods and challenges for the assessment of adaptive capacity. It presents and discusses the ranges of governance determinants of adaptive capacity as they have developed out of the different discourses such as good governance, adaptive governance, adaptive management, vulnerability and resilience. It concludes that the relative paucity of deep empirical examples exploring adaptive actions in periods that might be representative of a future warmer world remains a challenge in the operationalisation and characterisation of adaptive capacity as well as in the development in understanding how to mobilise it as climate change impacts take hold.

Water Governance in the Context of IWRM: Chile

This chapter outlines the work completed for the ACQWA project on the governance assessments for the Chilean case area and is used to provide vital background to the water governance situation and associated challenges. In the Chilean case, significant challenges persist across the governance indicators, in particular in relation to transparency and accountability. While water governance at the political level is driven through a centralised approach, water management happens in the private sphere and is driven by private interests. Despite the strong codified nature of water governance through the Water Code, the weakness of enforcement and capacity in the DGA means that provisions relating to protection of aquatic ecosystems can effectively be ignored at the basin level. The market focus on water management has meant that public institutions responsible for water rights management or water and environmental issues have very limited capacity to address water issues.

Adaptive Capacity, Adaptive Governance and Resilience

Different challenges arising from increasingly uncertain and unpredictable hydro-climatic conditions have been accompanied by a shifting focus of water governance solutions. More recently, the water resources research community has paid increasingly close attention to climate change adaptation and adaptive processes in relation to water governance, recognizing the need to better understand adaptive processes that seek to embrace, rather than control uncertainty. This chapter presents these issues and introduces the linked concepts of adaptive capacity, adaptive governance and resilience in social ecological systems. It provides a review of how these topics approach the challenges presented in previous chapters, and how scholars have sought to develop these frameworks to better take into account the need to foster and mobilise adaptive capacity within water governance structures.

Addressing Water Governance Challenges in the Anthropocene

Water governance, negotiation between actors and institutions for the effective implementation of acceptable water allocation and regulation, faces a plethora of challenges over the coming decades. The challenges arising from population growth, development, climate variability as well as climate change impacts. Concurrently, a crisis of governance has been recognised as one of the major issues facing global water resources over the past decades. The duality of essential role water governance plays in responding to these challenges and the recognised limitations and failures of governance regimes to adequately manage legacy issues predicates the value of closer investigation of both water governance challenges and solutions in the context of climate change and uncertainty. This chapter provides an introduction to the developments in both the challenges to and solutions from water governance over the past few decades.

Coping with and Communicating Uncertainty

Understanding and communicating uncertain and complex dynamics is one of the biggest challenges to mobilising action in the face of climate change as well as a wide range of other environmental issues. This short chapter provides some reflections that draw on a wide range of different disciplines as to how to potential communicate uncertainties. It is suggested that applying a diverse range of insights on motivating action in the face of complex science and uncertain futures could enhance the cohesiveness of cross-sector action and ingenuity of the approaches to climate change adaptation at the watershed level.