Livelihoods in drylands are already challenged by the demands of climate variability, and climate change is expected to have further implications for water resource availability in these regions. This paper characterizes the vulnerability of an irrigation-dependent agricultural community located in the Elqui River Basin of Northern Chile to water and climate-related conditions in light of climate change. The paper documents the exposures and sensitivities faced by the community in light of current water shortages, and identifies their ability to manage these exposures under a changing climate. The IPCC identifies potentially increased aridity in this region with climate change; furthermore, the Elqui River is fed by snowmelt and glaciers, and its flows will be affected by a warming climate. Community vulnerability occurs within a broader physical, economic, political and social context, and vulnerability in the community varies amongst occupations, resource uses and accessibility to water resources, making some more susceptible to changing conditions in the future. This case study highlights the need for adaptation to current land and water management practices to maintain livelihoods in the face of changes many people are not expecting.

ABSTRACT. We compare the structures and adaptive capacities of water governance regimes that respond to water scarcity or drought in the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB) of western Canada and the Elqui River Basin (EB) in Chile. Both regions anticipate climate change that will result in more extreme weather events including increasing droughts. The SSRB and the EB represent two large, regional, dryland water basins with significant irrigated agricultural production but with significantly different governance structures. The Canadian governance situation is characterized as decentralized multilevel governance with assigned water licenses; the Chilean is characterized as centralized governance with privatized water rights. Both countries have action at all levels in relation to water scarcity or drought. This structural comparison is based on studies carried out in each region assessing the adaptive capacity of each region to climate variability in the respective communities and applicable governance institutions through semistructured qualitative interviews. Based on this comparison, conclusions are drawn on the adaptive capacity of the respective water governance regimes based on four dimensions of adaptive governance that include: responsiveness, learning, capacity, including information, leadership, and equity. The result of the assessment allows discussion of the significant differences in terms of ability of distinct governance structures to foster adaptive capacity in the rural sector, highlights the need for a better understanding of the relationship of adaptive governance and good governance, and the need for more conceptual work on the interconnections of the dimensions of adaptive governance.

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Climate change will increasingly impact large areas of South America, affecting important natural resources and people's livelihoods. These impacts will make rural people disproportionately more vulnerable, given their dependency on ecosystem services and their exposure to other stressors, such as new rules imposed by agribusiness and trends toward the commodification of natural resources. This paper focuses on the vulnerability of rural communities in Andean drylands of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, showing how different economic and political pathways lead to different levels of vulnerability. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the methodological and theoretical concept of vulnerability, which framed the research. Starting from the premise that global environmental change impacts are strongly linked to styles of development, the discussion explores the diverse institutional capital and governance schemes as well as different development styles in the case studies and their role in increasing or reducing local vulnerability to climate and water scarcity. Using a comparative perspective, the exposures and adaptive capacities of rural actors in three river basins are discussed, emphasizing situations that speak for the ways in which development styles counteract or magnify conditions of vulnerability. The analysis considers irrigated and non-irrigated agriculture, water property interests, different productive structures (viticulture, horticulture, etc.), producer typologies (large/small, export, etc.), and geographical location. Finally, the paper offers some insights about development style and adaptive capacities of rural people to overcome those vulnerabilities.

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