Question

Which question has been addressed in this step?

Identifying measures: Which are the main actors/institutions involved in CC adaptation decisionmaking and how are they linked? What are their objectives and relative influence? What are the barriers that should be tackled to improve decisionmaking? Which changes could be made in the socioinstitutional framework?

Why has this question been chosen?

• decisionmakers/ stakeholders identify the main social and institutional problems for addressing adaptation to climate change.
• Understanding social and institutional networks is a key to identifying possible adaptation measures when many different stakeholders, public and private are involved.
• To help decisionmakers/ stakeholders be aware of objectives in adaptation decision making, potential conflicts and relative influence of the different actors.

Which methods have been applied?

• Participatory workshop with stakeholders in which the Socioinstitutional Network Mapping (SNM) exercise was developed using the NetMap approach. Within each stakeholder group, the participants analyzed the influence of the different actors on the adaptation problem addressed and defined goals for each actor by using flipcharts, post-it notes and symbolic towers of power.
• Stakeholders asked to identify weak points in the different socio-institutional networks: missing flow of information, missing funds, wrong allocation of resources, etc., and provided information on how improve decision-making in the domain of climate change adaptation.

Why have these methods been selected?

• Irrigation in the Guadiana makes use of a shared aquifer and thus affects all farmers.
• Long experience of stakeholder consultation, meetings and participatory modelling methods. Easy to implement. Visual output which facilitates understanding. Successful previous experience in other countries (e.g. Kenya, Bangladesh, UK)

What results have been obtained?

Three socio-institutional networks maps:

• The water administration group (Group 1) built a hierarchical type of network: Administrations are in the middle of the network and work as bridges to other users. Flows mainly go from the EU to other administrations and to other users, showing reciprocal interdependences.
• The group made up by farmers (Group 2) designed a more fragmented network. Individual action predominates. Irrigators are strongly linked to other organizations but they do not act as bridges among them. Flows of funds and implementation capacity go from the international level to local level irrigation community. Environmental organizations and scientists are the main information providers.
• Environmental reps (Group 3) designed a homogeneous network with different actors highly connected. The EU is the main source of information and funds. Irrigators and agricultural producers organisations are the main focus of implementation capacity.

Weak points of the socioinstitutional framework that would be important to explore in further work:

• Need of mediators between the EU and users when analyzing flows.
• Local administrations, which are missing or hardly connected to other actors. They should play a bigger role in adaptation decisionmaking.
• Researchers and environmental organizations receive an important flow of knowledge, but are not connected to water users, only with the administration.
• Irrigators are perceived as disconnected from other actors.

Reflections on this step

• It was the first time a stakeholder workshop took place in the Guadiana basin to discuss issues related to climate change adaptation. Good atmosphere among the stakeholders and expressions of interest received for pursuing further discussions on climate change impacts and adaptation in the region.
• The stakeholders seem to have a good general view of the system. They identified a high number of actors and explicitly detailed the links between them.
• Stakeholders mostly agreed on the type of actors involved in adaptation decision- making. All the groups identified two main groups of actors: water users (especially, the agricultural sector) and policy makers; plus universities/research, and environmental organizations.
• Similar conclusions among groups. The most influential actors are the EU, the national and regional governments, and the irrigators. Researchers and environmental NGOs have limited influence due to the lack of enforcement capacity.
• Conflicting objectives are evident: conservation/ environmental protection and development/economic benefit are seen as opposed to each other. Some actors try to combine all interests (e.g. EU, Ministry of Environment, Regional Climate Change Offices)