Assessment of climate change adaptation to improve water security in the Andes: current policies, remaining gaps and future opportunities

The Andes are among the regions most affected worldwide by water insecurity with an increasing number of vulnerable people. Particularly seasonally dry regions such as the Bolivian-Peruvian Altiplano and the Dry Andes of Central Chile and Western Argentina exhibit considerable water stress due to increasingly adverse impacts from climate and land use changes, and growing water demand.

Adaptation to changing water availability is therefore a priority, but systematic scientific and diverse knowledge on adaptation policies and experiences has barely been documented for the Andean region. Here we present the first comprehensive assessment of climate change adaptation in the entire Andes for different adaptation types (management and planning, monitoring system, nature-based solutions, grey infrastructure, financing, and awareness and behaviour) and policies (climate change law, glacier law, Nationally Determined Contributions). This study is based on work contributed to and recently published in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group II (Chapter 12: Central and South America).

In the last two decades, several policies on climate change, water protection, regulation and management laws for adaptation in the mountain water sector have been implemented. The first Framework Law on Climate Change was implemented in Peru (2018) and is under way in Colombia, Chile and Venezuela. One milestone represents the Glacier Protection Law in place in Argentina (2010–2019) and under construction in Chile (since 2005). Furthermore, new water laws that include principles of integrated water resource management have entered into force, for example, in Peru (2009) and Ecuador (2014), or are under way in Colombia (since 2009). However, current realities in the Andes show major challenges in implementing integrated and sustainable water management mechanisms and policies. These are related but not limited to political and institutional instabilities, governance structures, fragmented service provision, lack of economies of scale and scope, corruption and social conflicts.

Although a growing body of climate change adaptation-related policies and initiatives exist for the Andes, evidence on their effectiveness is scarce. In many parts of the region the level of success of adaptation measures depends largely on the governance of projects and stakeholder-based processes and is closely related to their effectiveness, efficiency, social equity and sociopolitical legitimacy. Examples of successful implementation linked to e.g. watershed protection include water funds (e.g. Quito, Ecuador) and stakeholder platform processes (e.g. Moyobamba, Peru). Even less evidence has been reported for limits of adaptation or maladaptation experiences in the water sector. Most barriers to advance adaptation in the Andes are associated with missing links of science–society–policy processes, institutional fragilities, pronounced hierarchies, unequal power relations and top-down water governance regimes.

Adaptation gaps could be bridged by strengthening transdisciplinary research at the science-policy interface with blended bottom-up and top-down approaches in locally tailored adaptation agendas. Recently, the inclusion of indigenous and local knowledges in current adaptation baselines has attracted increasing attention, particularly in regions with a high share of indigenous peoples, such as Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Important questions centre around how to integrate diverse knowledge from the early planning stages on, to achieve enhanced or transformational adaptation building on co-produced knowledge.