The re-adaptation challenge: limits and opportunities of existing infrastructure and institutions in adaptive water governance

Climate Change, Adaptation Planning and Institutional Integration: A Literature Review and Framework

“…Efforts to manifest adaptive capacity may "backfire", potentially increasing vulnerability [73]. This is known as maladaptation [74,75]. Maladaptive outcomes bear the double burden of generally worsening conditions (reducing resilience or increasing vulnerability) at the implied mutual exclusion of building adaptive capacity due to resource limits [76].…”

“…Gupta [4] elegantly renders institutions as "social patterns", while a more expansive view, according to Oberlack [74], citing several others, articulates institutions as "rules and procedures that structure action situations within which individual and collective decisionmaking [is affected to] constrain, enable and incentivize actions; link individual actions, events and outcomes; distribute authority and power; define reciprocal rights and duties; and shape beliefs, motivations and social learning" [24,169,234,235]. These may be formal or informal [159].…”

“…From an economic perspective, the linkages between humans and their environment are mediated by countless rules that shape and reinforce beliefs and values, but these are dynamic and responsive [241]. Where public policy is concerned, this dynamic quality of institutions has important implications because the question of how power and influence is distributed within society-including this critical capacity to alter existing situations and arrangements-is of enormous importance in the climate change era [74], insofar as planning efforts are understood as being shaped by larger cultural and institutional forces, and these may fail to present obvious, accessible, and discrete decision-making processes themselves [172,225].…”

Institutions for reoperating reservoirs in semi-arid regions facing climate change and competing societal water demands: insights from Colorado

“…Whether related to hydrological and climate change, urbanization, environmental concerns, or other factors, reservoir reoperation can improve system performance by offering water managers and policymakers a mechanism through which to adapt to changing conditions and evolving water demands (Benson, 2018). Indeed, reservoir reoperation is increasingly positioned as a climate change-adaptation strategy (Scott et al, 2020;Watts et al, 2011), in which modifying existing infrastructure provides an alternative to building new structures. As basins around the world reach saturation with existing supply-side infrastructure, or as additional storage infrastructure becomes socially, ecologically or politically unpalatable, the ability to meet changing and competing demands will depend at least in part on the possibilities to reoperate existing infrastructure.…”

From Power to Legitimacy—Explaining Historical and Contemporary Water Conflict at Yesa Reservoir (Spain) and Gross Reservoir (USA) Using Path Dependency

“…However, it is not only the development of new infrastructure that can become embroiled in conflict, as this paper draws attention to, but also the reoperation of existing dams and reservoirs. Whereas reoperation, which might involve changes to releases or storage volumes at existing sites, can be considered a more "soft approach" or adaptive measure in comparison to building new infrastructure [4,5], it can be subject to the same debates, which evolve over time, about the most environmentally, socially, and economically responsible way to ensure a reliable water supply.…”