In Santiago de Chile, the combination of recent urbanization patterns, increasing demand for water, energy and land, and climate change will provide challenges particularly with respect to equitable distribution of different resources and the amplification of existing levels of vulnerability, which are generally not distributed uniformly across urban populations. In response, the international project ClimateAdaptationSantiago (CAS), operating at the science-policy interface, seeks to develop adaptation measures according to related vulnerabilities for the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile in the key sectors of energy, water and land use.

Science-related activities include projecting local climate change (with a focus on the urban-regional level), estimating its consequences by explorative scenarios and finally proposing adaptive measures. Acting at the science-policy interface, the project strongly builds on a participatory process with key institutional representatives from a wide variety of different sectors of society (public and private sector, civil society and academia, and multilateral organizations).

This chapter addresses the question of how stakeholder involvement helps (a) to best incorporate perspectives on long-term adaptation into short political agendas and (b) to bridge the sector divide in designing local adaptation measures.