Assessing adaptive capacity of water management organizations. The case study of the municipality of Tomave (Bolivia)

Abstract

Climate change is only one of several pressure and drivers, such as natural disasters, improvements in technologies and changing customers’ behaviors that water organizations have to relate and adapt to. This places new challenges (e.g. dealing with increased exposure, vulnerability, and uncertainty) to water management and require water organizations to change their perspective on how to deal with water issues. This paper builds on a literature review to identify dimensions and criteria of adaptive capacity and presents a conceptual framework to assess organizational adaptive capacity. The developed framework has been tested within the Municipality of Tomave (Bolivia). The paper results emphasize the incapacity to transform routines as the context is changing leads to the construction of barriers and to the inability of an organization to support the process of change of the society. In addition, the study emphasis that the development of a working system based on cooperation requires first that an organization acquires skills and adapt its routines to the new working system. Furthermore, the development of a participatory process of planning and implementation of policies would help to reduce the trade-offs and conflicts related to water management. Linked to this, the development of a system for monitoring and evaluation of policies implemented organization can contribute to build an iterative mechanism so to allow a redefinition and improvement of such policies.

Keywords:

• adaptive capacity
• organizations
• water sector
• drought risk
• Bolivia

Acknowledgment

The author wants to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insights and critical review, Prof. Paul Jeffery, and Heather Smith for their helpful suggestions and comments.