Evolving polycentric climate governance. The case of multifunctional water use in Oberhasli, Switzerland

Abstract

Many resource regimes in advanced democracies are complex rather than integrated (due to the sectoral division of labor within public administrations, the lack of transversal coordination, competition for resources, strong property rights, etc.), leading to contradictory incentives in resource management. This presentation shows how governance processes are evolving to regulate competing multifunctional water uses under climate change in Oberhasli (BE), in the Swiss Alps. Our approach combines the frameworks of Institutional Resource Regimes (IRR) and Polycentric Governance. The IRR framework stipulates that formal institutional rules – public policies and property rights – shape the leeway that is available to resource users for defining localized resource-use modalities. Polycentric governance systems are those in which political authority is dispersed amongst a range of bodies that operate in overlapping jurisdictions which are not in a hierarchical relationship to one another. Recent scholarship suggests that polycentric organization of governance has a higher capacity to deal with complex challenges arising from climate change. The project aims to analyze under which conditions polycentricity can lead to a better coordination of resource uses. We performed a detailed case study to analyze governance processes of climate change mitigation and adaptation in Switzerland. Data were collected through 22 semi-structured interviews between 2016 and 2018 and document analysis. The results show that if the number of regulations increases and if simultaneously their coherence decreases, then this constellations promotes polycentric governance. The results further show the conditions under which polycentric governance improves or not the coordination of resource uses.