An analysis of adaptive planning capacity: the case of Chilean water utilities

New long-term planning approaches capable of coping with uncertainties such as climate change, rapid urbanization, and changing societal values, have been put forward as a way of producing more robust and sustainable plans for the future. But is the planning practice ready for their adoption? This paper takes four key propositions from the adaptive planning literature and tests the existing capacity for adopting those propositions in the context of Chilean water utilities. We will then propose how existing capacities could be enhanced, and propose alternatives for current planning practices, highlighting the importance of implementation through experimentation.