Adaptation to climate change and resilience of territories: Revealing the drivers of socio-ecological system changes in three watersheds of Latin America

In many territories, the challenges of adaptation to climate change (CC) are basically those of development, with a specific attention on resources affected by climate variability. The definition of strategies to cope with CC therefore benefits from the previous analysis of socio-ecological dynamics. The main purpose of such analysis is to better understand ongoing development processes and the main issues they are related with. Within the research-action Eco-Adapt project, we analyzed the dynamics of the Socio-Ecological System (SES) of 3 watershed territories of 3 countries of South America : the Los pericosmanantiales watershed in Jujuy province (Argentina), the Zapoco watershed in Chiquitania (Bolivia) and the upper basin of the Imperial river in Alto malleco (Chile), and discussed their resilience. We built and backed up with data, shared representations with local stakeholders of how their territory is functioning. For that matter, we used the conceptual modeling method, PARDI (Problem, Actors, Resources, Dynamics, Interactions), which we adapted to local forms of participation, and we mobilized the Resilience Assessment analytical framework in the construction of historical timelines. We show that the three watersheds are facing the same general problematic: how to manage the water avaiblability in quantity and quality in a context of a raising demand for multi competing purposes (agriculture, hydro-electriciy, human consumption,...). However, the intensity of the problem differs according to watershed. Whereas water scarcity and polutions are already tangible in Argentina and Bolivia, Water scarcity and polutions are not yet stringent in Chile. In the first two cases, the problems of water scarcity results from biophysical availability due to watershed hydrologic dinamics (precipatation and waterstream), infrastructures conditions and actors' practices that reduce the availability of water dowstream. In the case of Chile, the water scarcity does not result from hydrologic functioning or actors' water related practices, but from regulation that led to create a legal scarcity of water access. Based on the comparison of the models of SES dinamics and their drivers, we finally discuss the relative importance of the main types of existing water regulation (hierarchy, collectiva action, market) in the resilience of the territories and perspective of adaptation to CC. (Texte integral)