Exploring the territories of climate governance: a systemic and network approach illustrated in the case of Chile

Meta-governance literature has sought to move towards more integrated governance approaches that overcome the current fragmentation of policies and initiatives, while recognizing the need to adjust these models to the characteristics of each specific territory. For this effort to be effective, however, it must recognize the new and heterogeneous ‘territories’ of climate change governance and its normative and socio-political implications. In light of this, we propose a novel approach based on a systemic perspective, which allows us to conceptualize governance as ‘third-order couplings’ in territorial systems. This approach is applied to the analysis of climate governance in Chile, focusing on the interactions between physical elements, ecosystem services and regulations, especially analyzing the interpenetration between water management and climate change policies. The analysis reveals spaces of fragmentation, duplication and incoherence in the domain of laws, regulations and governance actors, which are contrasted with the underlying interactions at the hydroclimatic system level. We identify three key gaps: i) the disconnect between different ‘objects’ of regulation ii) the fragmentation between actors, policies and regulatory Frameworks; and, c) the tension between conservation and adaptation. These limitations are not contingent, but rather deeply embedded in the historical way in which public bodies have observed the environment as an object of steering and regulation: as a siloed conglomerate of individual processes and domains of intervention instead than as integrated socio-ecological system. We conclude that it is essential to move towards integrated climate governance that recognises territorial interdependencies, strengthening coordinated planning and promoting a regulatory framework that reflects the complexity of socio-ecological systems.