Synthesis, part of a special feature on Convergent Science for Sustainable Regional Systems

INTRODUCTION

The Intermountain West of the USA faces unprecedented challenges. These include climate change (Iturbide et al. 2021), extended drought and the increased severity of wildfires (Park Williams et al. 2013), rapid population growth (Dettinger et al. 2015), and dwindling water supplies in the region (Craig 2020). These stresses increase the tensions along the gradient of urban to rural communities and landscapes, making communities vulnerable to disruptions from pandemics and other stressors (Wang 2021). Building upon the transformability principles proposed by Folke et al. (2010) and incorporating ideas from related fields (Geels 2002, Markolf et al. 2018), we propose a framework we call “guided transformation” (GT) as a way of conceptualizing these challenges and identifying new trajectories and opportunities for change. Guided transformation is a conceptual framework that draws on three main types of research traditions: social-ecological systems (SES) and resilience theory; social, ecological, and technological systems (SETS) theory; and sustainability transitions research (STR). After outlining the conceptual framework and its relationship to relevant literature, we provide three examples to illustrate the utility of GT. The first example is the upper Rio Grande watershed in New Mexico, where innovative governance strategies are addressing the challenge of wildfire and watershed protection. Next, we turn to the Yakima Basin in Washington State, where drought stresses drove opportunities for collaboration. Finally, we discuss work on the Navajo Nation addressing food, energy, and water security and Indigenous sovereignty through solar greenhouse technology. We demonstrate that our GT framework provides a way for communities facing continual change to identify windows of opportunity, conceptualize new trajectories, and drive innovation.

GUIDED TRANSFORMATION AS A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Guided transformation refers to a deliberate and planned process of transitioning from an undesirable system state or trajectory (often the current system state or status quo) to a more preferred system state, taking into account the complex and interrelated social, ecological, and technological systems that underpin these transformations. As a conceptual framework, GT draws from three main areas of research: social-ecological systems (SES) and resilience theory as it emerged from the Holling school of ecological resilience (Holling 1973, Gunderson and Holling 2002, Walker and Salt 2012); social, ecological, and technological systems (SETS) theory and its emphasis on the role of technology and built infrastructure (Krumme 2016, Markolf et al. 2018); and sustainable transitions research (STR) with its focus on identifying innovations and pathways for successful transitions toward sustainability (Costanza 1991, Kemp 1994, Geels 2002, Loorbach et al. 2017).

The GT framework interfaces with existing frameworks in the field of sustainability, resilience, and transitions research. One example includes the resist-accept-direct (RAD) paradigm (Schuurman et al. 2020, 2022, Williams and Brown 2024) that seeks to provide natural resource managers with ways of thinking about how to decide which systems can be maintained in their current state (resist), when some change can be allowed to change autonomously (accept), and where managers actively shape change in ecosystem composition, structure, processes, or function toward preferred new conditions (direct). The GT framework also interfaces with the related approach of resistance-resilience-transformation (RTT) (Peterson St.-Laurent et al. 2021), which places more emphasis on a combination of actions and outcomes and includes the option of “resilience,” i.e., the capacity of a system to return to a desired state (Peterson St.-Laurent et al. 2021). For the purposes of GT, the interface with RTT is particularly useful, as “transformation” as opposed to “direct” includes a nuanced number of options, including directed, accelerated, and autonomous actions for transformation (Peterson St.-Laurent et al. 2021). Guided transformation is also related to scenario planning, with its emphasis on navigating trends in the face of uncertainty (Kuiper et al. 2024).

Resilience theory, SETS, and STR also each independently provide a basis from which to conceptualize pathways and navigate change, and GT emphasizes key elements from each approach. Resilience theory brings with it concepts of system dynamics, regime shifts, windows of opportunity, and cross-scale interactions (Gunderson and Holling 2002, Folke et al. 2005, Olsson et al. 2006, Goldstein 2008, Walker and Salt 2012, Berkes and Ross 2013). From SETS theory, GT gains a focus on interactions among social, ecological, and technological systems, especially the role of infrastructure and technology in creating lock-ins and path dependencies (Arthur 1989, Corvellec et al. 2013, Payo et al. 2016, Markolf et al. 2018). Finally, STR brings an emphasis on innovation, leveraging disruptions, and identifying pathways for transitions toward sustainability (Geels 2002, 2004, Markard et al. 2012, Loorbach et al. 2017, Köhler et al. 2019, Markard 2020). By combining key elements from each of these theories and frameworks, GT creates an integrated approach that emphasizes understanding complex system dynamics and regime shifts, recognizing the role of technology and infrastructure in creating lock-ins, and leveraging windows of opportunity and innovations to drive sustainable transitions, all while considering interactions across social, ecological, and technological domains.

Although a comprehensive summary of each of the three fields is beyond the scope of this manuscript, we now provide a brief summary as they relate to GT, and Table 1 provides operational definitions and key concepts for each field.

Social-ecological systems (SES)

At the core of the GT conceptual framework are SES theory and the embedded concept of resilience. We define resilience as the capacity of a system to absorb a spectrum of disturbances and reorganize to retain essentially the same function, structure, and feedback (i.e., to have the same identity) (Walker and Salt 2012). This work comes from the field of ecology, although applications are highly interdisciplinary (Cosens et al. 2018).

Who gets to determine a system’s identity, its key features, structures, and processes is critical to the successful deployment of resilience ideas. Any invocation of the concept of resilience must ask not only “resilience of what, to what” (Carpenter et al. 2001) but also “for whom?” and “for what purpose?” (Cutter 2016, Dewulf et al. 2019, Meerow and Newell 2019). These questions acknowledge power dynamics and the role of agency in SESs and directly influence who, or what, is included or excluded in transformational processes. This includes a recognition of who wields the power to define resilience and make choices or decisions about actions in the pursuit of resilience (Dewulf et al. 2019).

Resilience resides within an SES framework, one in which ecological components interact with social components in multiple ways and across various scales. The concept of panarchy provides a way of thinking about the cross-scale dynamic interactions among the levels of a system and considers the interplay between change and persistence across scales (Gunderson and Holling 2002). A critical component of a resilience orientation is the recognition of regime shifts and nonlinear change within SES and across these scales. This provides a way of thinking about how to foster the SES components and dynamics. Where regime shifts occur, transformation results, and the system reconceptualizes itself and creates a fundamentally new system with different characteristics (Walker and Salt 2012, Chaffin et al. 2016). According to Walker and Salt (2012), a system’s transformative capacity is defined by (1) the degree to which managers of the SES are prepared for a change (as opposed to being in a state of denial), (2) the identified options for change (the possible new “trajectories” for the system), and (3) the capacity to change (the ability to make choices from among the possible new trajectories). Folke et al. (2010) define transformability as “The capacity to transform the stability landscape itself in order to become a different kind of system, to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable.” The untenability of existing systems states drives a focus toward transformation rather than maintaining or sustaining what currently exists (Milly et al. 2008, Benson and Craig 2017, Craig 2020). Transformation requires being prepared for change, navigating the transition by leveraging windows of opportunity for change, and building resilience to the new social-ecological regime (Folke et al. 2010).

It is the capacity of actors within the SES to choose among possible trajectories that provide the potential for system transformations that are guided. Yet GT cannot exist without a “window of opportunity,” an ecological crisis, or some other form of rapid change that triggers the emergence of networks and promotes new forms of governance or other opportunities for innovation and change (Folke et al. 2005, Olsson et al. 2006, Goldstein 2008, Berkes and Ross 2013).

Social, ecological, and technological systems (SETS)

Social, ecological, and technological systems theory is a framework that integrates social, ecological, and technological systems to understand the complex relationships among them (Chang et al. 2021). At its core, SETS theory recognizes that these systems are interconnected and that changes in one system can have significant impacts on the others. One key theoretical contribution from SETS theory is the concept of lock-in. Markolf and colleagues (2018) posit that expanded perspectives on the complex, multidisciplinary, and interconnected nature of infrastructure systems, which contain lock-in and path dependencies, offer a crucial first step toward resilient infrastructure services. They define lock-in as constraints on current infrastructure caused by past decisions and actions, even in the context of changing operating conditions or the emergence of more effective alternatives (Corvellec et al. 2013). Lock-in is perpetuated and often exacerbated by the related concept of path dependency, which refers to constraints on a system’s ability to change (e.g., adapt or transform), such that it is often very costly and difficult to alter an existing infrastructure system from its current trajectory (Arthur 1989, Payo et al. 2016). Roads, for example, “lock” transportation systems into cars.

Social, ecological, and technological systems theory emphasizes the importance of considering technology and infrastructure within the context of complex social and ecological processes that interact with infrastructure (Markolf et al. 2018). The SETS approach highlights the constraints inherent in the complex interactions and interconnections among social, ecological, and technological subsystems that lock in vulnerabilities, constrain adaptation, and lead to fragile systems (Markolf et al. 2018). When applying a SETS framework to gradients of urban–rural landscapes, one can see how the interactions within these complex systems, particularly how humans react, influence whole system responses to disturbances and extreme events (Grimm et al. 2017, Lugo 2020, Chang et al. 2021). Furthermore, lock-in is not always the result of infrastructure. Existing management practices and cultural beliefs can also lock in maladaptive strategies (e.g., forest management that includes wildfire suppression). Although the SETS literature emphasizes misalignments and constraints to infrastructure and technology, it can be employed here with other frameworks to identify opportunities for GT.

Sustainability transitions research (STR)

Sustainability transitions research focuses on the issue of how to promote and govern transitions toward sustainability (Köhler et al. 2019). Core to the STR approach is the concept of innovation, and in fact, STR is considered a type of innovations research (Loorbach et al. 2017). Opportunities, whether they be social, technological, cultural, or other interventions, shift system dynamics and facilitate transitions (Köhler et al. 2019). A central aim of STR is to conceptualize and explain how regime changes can occur in the way societal functions are fulfilled (Köhler et al. 2019). Sustainability transitions research focuses primarily on socio-technical systems, including food, water, and energy supplies. Such systems consist of networks of actors (individuals, firms, organizations, etc.) and institutions (societal and technical norms, regulations, standards of good practice) that interact to provide services for society (Geels 2004, Markard et al. 2012, Markard 2020). Sustainability transitions research emphasizes the importance of these interactions to understand system dynamics and system transformation with a forward-looking emphasis (Markard et al. 2012).

A number of conceptual frameworks have emerged in the STR field, the most prominent of which is the multi-level perspective (MLP) model (Geels 2002). The MLP model argues that transitions come about through dynamic processes within and between analytical levels or scales: (1) niches at the local scale—protected spaces allowing for radical innovations; (2) socio-technical regimes at the meso scale—the institutional structuring of existing systems or the status quo; and (3) the socio-technical landscape at the macro scale—government policies, global markets, and supply chains, etc. (Geels 2004). Within the MLP framework, transitions in socio-technical regimes arise through innovations at the niche scale, but the existing regimes (status quo) will commonly act to resist transition. The opportunity for a breakthrough is increased when the socio-technical landscape puts pressure on the regime for changes such as new regulations, tax incentives, or shifting consumer preferences (Markard et al. 2012).

Guided transformation (GT) as a conceptual model

Our GT model builds upon SES resilience principles of system dynamics, including the use of a “basin of attraction” set of states (Walker et al. 2004), that identify both the existing and alternative system states. Also incorporated are elements from SETS theory, the concepts of interactions and interconnections between subsystems and lock-in vulnerabilities that often constrain adaptation and contribute to fragility (Markolf et al. 2018). Finally, STR concepts are employed to assist in the formulation of forward-looking perspectives and innovation (Markard et al. 2012), including the principles of multi-level connections called for in SES (Walker et al. 2004).

Our conceptualization of the GT model is illustrated in Fig. 1.

Combined, the fields of SES, STR, and SETS provide a powerful combination of insights and tools for thinking about systems facing continual change. Whereas resilience and systems thinking offer an important, foundational grounding for GT, the inclusion of SETS and STR concepts enriches the foundation in critical ways. Taking SETS first, the research engagement setting is often “high T,” that is, dominated by technology in the form of infrastructure in various forms. This is particularly true in the Intermountain West, where hydrological modifications in the form of dams and diversions define the landscape (Milly et al. 2008). Although it is possible to conceptualize this in a traditional SES model, providing a more complex way of thinking about the interactions of system elements and their dynamics with a SETS framework, particularly the concept of lock-in, offers a way of thinking about the role infrastructure and other technologies play in these systems in creating path dependencies (Ahlborg at al. 2019). Determining how dams and other hydro-social features fit into traditional SES frameworks can be problematic (Swyngedouw 2009). There are advantages to leveraging lock-in and other concepts within an SES resilience framework, especially when taking a critical and relational approach (see Webster et al., in press), while also emphasizing the elements of regime change and cross-scale dynamics (Gunderson and Holling 2002, Garmestani et al. 2009; see Table 1). Lock-in is a similar concept to that of “rigidity traps” in resilience thinking (Carpenter and Brock 2008) and path dependence in STR research (Klitkou et al. 2014). Yet, whereas the rigidity trap focuses on the adaptive capacity of the system, the concept of lock-in has the potential to focus more broadly.

Sustainability transitions research also provides additional ways of thinking about the societal factors involved in promoting more sustainable approaches within systems (see Table 1). With a focus on emerging innovations and leveraging disruptions, STR’s focus on identifying pathways to transition is key to the “guided” part of the transformation. This field also emphasizes innovation as bottom-up, stemming from community-based knowledge and values and examining the role of agency within socio-technical landscapes (Loorbach et al. 2017, Huttunen et al. 2022). That said, citizen participation has empirically been relatively low in actual applications of STR (Huttunen et al. 2022).

As noted above, the “for whom” and “how” elements of resilience and identifying possible new trajectories and guided transformations often are unexamined (Brown 2014, Mikulewicz 2019). Guided transformation can be used as a participatory approach to address many of these concerns. The first step in the GT framework is working with community partners, including tribal partners, municipalities, irrigation districts, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), to identify system dynamics and processes that form the system’s identity, as well as internal and external drivers that influence its capacity to maintain that identity.

After the existing system state is characterized by the community members themselves, frameworks can be developed to identify desirable and undesirable characteristics of the system state and perturbing factors and disturbances, and to assess whether they constitute potential or existing threats, as well as their capacity to control those threats (Bahadur et al. 2013, Padgham et al. 2015). Possible trajectories are identified, as well as the capacity to choose among those trajectories. The GT approach works with systems dynamics modeling approaches outlined elsewhere in this Special Feature (see Webster et al., in press; Morgan et al., unpublished manuscript) that integrate different epistemologies and ontologies that arise when working across disciplines and with a wide variety of community partners, including tribal partners.

The GT framework has several broader implications for resilience and sustainability. It provides an integrated approach that combines insights from SESs, SETS, and STR. This allows for a more holistic understanding of complex sustainability challenges. Emphasizing windows of opportunity created by disruptions or crises to drive positive system changes shifts the focus from merely coping with disturbances to leveraging them for transformation. Guided transformation also recognizes the role of lock-ins and path dependencies in constraining change, while also seeking innovations to overcome these barriers. With an emphasis on tangible outcomes through innovation, GT emphasizes the need to consider social, ecological, and technological factors in pursuing sustainability transformations. As such, it provides a way to translate theoretical concepts into practical action for enhancing community and environmental resilience.

CASE STUDIES IN GUIDED TRANSFORMATION

We now provide three examples illustrating the use of the GT conceptual model. Each case study also includes a “next steps” element that hints at the potential for GT to move beyond a conceptual model to a participatory approach. As will be seen, the framework is flexible enough to be applied across different scales and contexts, from local communities to regional watersheds. It also provides a way to translate theoretical concepts into practical action for enhancing community resilience. Table 2 provides a side-by-side comparison of the following case studies’ movement across a landscape of alternative states identified in Fig. 1. The first case study is in the Upper Rio Grande watershed in New Mexico, where innovative governance strategies are addressing the challenge of wildfire and watershed protection. The second is in eastern Washington and the Yakima Basin, where drought drove innovation in the form of an integrated water management plan that is now helping to meet the needs of both farmers and fish in the basin. In the final case study, we discuss work on the Navajo Nation addressing food, energy, and water security and Indigenous sovereignty through solar greenhouse technology.

Example 1: Wildfire creates cooperation in the Upper Rio Grande Watershed

Temperatures in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Watershed are projected to increase between 1° and 3°C compared with the late 20th century over the next 50 yr (Iturbide et al. 2021). This increase will have a transformative impact on New Mexico’s water supplies. Rising temperatures have and will continue to push headwater forests past ecological thresholds, exacerbate forest die-off, and make them increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires (Park Williams et al. 2013, Dunbar et al. 2022). This Rio Grande Watershed serves about half of New Mexico’s population, including the downstream communities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and surrounding agricultural areas (Benson and Craig 2017). The resulting ecological transformation will create increasing societal challenges for these downstream water users who depend upon functioning watersheds not only for water supply but also water storage, natural filtration, and flood control, among other ecosystem services (Yeakley et al. 2016, Morgan et al. 2023).

Three interrelated ecological drivers are largely responsible for the regime change occurring in New Mexico’s forest systems. First, increased annual temperatures impact the system in various ways. Higher temperatures elongate growing seasons, increasing water demands from agricultural users. Higher temperatures also dry soils and increase the threat of erosion. High temperatures also create a phenomenon known as vapor pressure deficit (VPD) (Park Williams et al. 2013), which is the difference between the amount of moisture in the air and how much moisture the air can hold. This “deficit” creates a situation in which the air is so dry that it begins sucking moisture out of trees, placing forest systems under incredible stress and creating forest die-offs (Park Williams et al. 2013). Bark beetle infestation is the second factor. Bark beetles are a natural part of many forest systems, but with climate change, bark beetles are playing a new role, with higher-than-average temperatures providing bark beetles a longer season to feed on trees already weakened by drought stress (Benson and Craig 2017). Drought stress from VPD and bark beetle infestation make forest systems more susceptible to the third ecological driver: wildfire. When combined, the result is a dramatic increase in fire frequency, severity, and size (Schoennagel et al. 2004), and the threat of fires is expected to increase further due to climate shifts in the future (Moritz et al. 2012). Warmer temperatures also mean that this feedback loop takes place for a longer period of time; the fire season in New Mexico is now 2 mo longer than it was 30 yr ago (Benson and Craig 2017). All these factors have implications for wildlife and cascading impacts on downstream water supply (Chen and Chang 2023).

Lock-in: human-induced fire suppression

Fire is an important and necessary element of New Mexico’s forests, but it is now playing a new role, largely due to misguided forest and rangeland management practices and increasing human encroachment into the forest system (Benson and Craig 2017, Radeloff et al. 2018). Before the late 1800s, fires moved through the landscape every 5–15 yr as low-intensity ground fires that reduced overall fuel loads. With colonization, however, came unintentional fire suppression in the form of livestock grazing, which by 1910 had largely denuded landscapes of vegetation, inadvertently preventing natural fire migration patterns (Benson and Craig 2017). Eventually, livestock numbers declined, but by then, the U.S. Forest Service began its fire-suppression efforts in earnest. Fire suppression allowed new trees to grow where meadows and grasslands once were, resulting in unprecedented tree density and the creation of “ladder fuels,” i.e., trees that can carry fire up to the crowns of mature trees. By 1990, the forest achieved a maximum density of biomass (Allen 2007).

Prior to human-induced fire suppression, fire was a more frequent but less intense part of the ecosystem (Benson and Craig 2017). Fires seldom burned an entire landscape, instead creating a mosaic pattern in which patches of conifer forest were complemented by aspen groves, scrub oak, and open meadows (Allen 2007). Today, the high fuel loads combined with extremely dry conditions caused by sustained drought are resulting in what is often called “mega-fires,” high severity burns that destroy elements of the ecosystem needed for the regeneration of new species.

Window of opportunity: Las Conchas fire of 2011

The Las Conchas fire of 2011 provides one such example of a mega-fire that also created a window of opportunity. The fire started when a tree fell on a power line during a period of prolonged drought. The first day, driven by strong and unpredictable winds, the fire burned 43,000 acres at a rate of about an acre per second. It eventually burned over 156,000 acres, resulted in the mandatory evacuation of the nearby community of Los Alamos and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and impacted several other local communities, including the Santa Clara Pueblo (Benson and Craig 2017).

The Las Conchas fire led to the degradation of soils, extreme flooding events, and severe water quality problems, impacting both local and downstream communities. Albuquerque’s water utility had to shut down its drinking water supply plant, which collects water directly from the Rio Grande, for several weeks when ash from the fire in the upper watershed overwhelmed the system’s filtration capacity (Benson and Craig 2017, Long and Chang 2023). It was, at the time, the largest fire in New Mexico history, and it created a sense of urgency that opened a window of opportunity for a new form of governance, including grassroots collaboratives, such as the Rio Grande Water Fund, which will now be examined below. (Morgan et al. 2023).

Guided transformation: Rio Grande water fund

Following the Las Conchas fire, a broad network of community partners began to organize around the idea of coordinating work at a watershed scale to protect the storage, delivery, and quality of Rio Grande water through landscape-scale forest and watershed restoration treatments in tributary forested watersheds (Morgan et al. 2023). Led by The Nature Conservancy, they launched the Rio Grande Water Fund (RGWF). The RGWF has a goal of implementing forest restoration on 600,000 acres between 2014 and 2034, both in the Upper Rio Grande watershed and portions of the San Juan Basin, a tributary watershed resulting from a transbasin diversion under the Colorado River Compact (Morgan et al. 2023). The RGWF now has over 100 signatories, including municipalities, federal, state, tribal, and local governments, irrigation districts, tribes, NGOs, industry associations, and others. It is currently working at the pace and scale set forth in its goals. This investment places the landscape on a new trajectory, one capable of “bouncing back” from wildfire.

Next steps: scale work and participatory work in the Santa Fe watershed and beyond

How the RGWF and similar collaboratives emerge, persist, and succeed is critical to understanding the future of watersheds in New Mexico and the Intermountain West. An inventory of wildfire and watershed collaboratives in the American West is currently underway to understand the adaptive governance strategies employed (see Srinivasan et al., unpublished manuscript). At a smaller scale within the Rio Grande Watershed, the researchers are now hoping to apply GT as a participatory model with community partners in the Santa Fe Watershed to anticipate wildfire and maintain sustainable water supplies (see Webster et al., in press).

Example 2: drought gives rise to innovation and collaboration in the Yakima Basin

The Yakima River Basin (Yakima or basin) is a 15,500 km² watershed in central Washington State. The basin supports a wide mix of water use, including irrigated agriculture, hydropower generation, municipal water supply, and environmental flows for fish. Runoff in the basin is mainly generated from snowpack, which historically has maintained cool, steady supplies of water during the dry summer season. Climate change in this region is causing declines in snowpack and changes to the timing of runoff (Hall et al. 2021). It is expected that with 1ºC of warming, the region will experience a loss of approximately 20% of its snowpack (Casola et al. 2009, Elsner 2009). Given the relative lack of substantial surface water storage in the basin, these changes to the timing and volume of water availability are becoming more pronounced over time, creating significant impacts on water users in the basin. Yet, despite the potential for conflict, partners in the basin have been able to identify collaborative solutions to a complex water management challenge.

Historically homeland to the Yakama Nation, the Yakima and its tributaries were an important cultural and food resource for Native communities by supporting populations of hundreds of thousands of salmon and other fish. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Euro-American settlement of the basin led to the development of a vast network of agricultural lands and water delivery infrastructure that came to dominate the watershed. Irrigated agriculture was encouraged and supported by the federal government through dams for storage and hydropower and hundreds of miles of canals for water delivery (Sheller 1997). Water rights assigned for agriculture created direct conflicts with water use by tribes, and irrigation infrastructure all but closed off the basin to salmon and other aquatic species, ultimately decimating their populations (Givens et al. 2018). Litigation ensued (e.g., Boldt Decision of 1974 (Brown 1994); Washington State Department of Ecology v Aquevella (State of Washington 2021)) and set the tone for decades of mistrust and disagreement about water management (United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and Washington State Department of Ecology (WA ECY 2012).

Lock-in: too many water users, not enough water

Today, the Yakima supports a mix of irrigation, hydropower, and municipal water use as well as a growing recognition and demand for water for instream flow uses aimed at supporting the reintroduction of salmon and other native aquatic species into the basin’s waterways. However, existing water-rights assignments across these user groups reflect overly optimistic historical allocation policies, which, under a changing hydrologic regime, now create significant challenges for meeting all users’ needs. Difficulties arise in part because the regulatory and legal system for managing water in the basin was not designed to equitably deal with water allocation, particularly during droughts (Givens et al. 2018). Challenges also arose as local and federal priorities clashed (e.g., the Endangered Species Act listing of bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) and steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in 1999) and as the state moved to restrict additional new water rights without a plan for mitigating impacts to existing stream flows.

Window of opportunity: triple drought tension

Multiple droughts since the 1970s have flared tensions between water users, resulting in numerous, lengthy lawsuits over water allocation in the Yakima (USBR and WA ECY 2012). However, a series of severe droughts in 2001 and 2005 wreaked havoc across Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. In Washington, poor snowpack and hotter-than-average summer temperatures led to dramatic curtailments in Yakima water rights across all sectors. Over the 4-yr timeframe, water users in Yakima lost hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural revenues and nearly $6 billion in hydropower generation (Bumbaco and Mote 2010), ultimately creating a nexus of urgent, political concern for how water is managed in the basin.

Guided transformation: Yakima Basin integrated plan

These closely occurring, successive droughts placed drought mitigation at the forefront of conversations occurring across multiple levels of government. Action was taken by the USBR, which moved forward with proceedings aimed at identifying pathways for mitigating future drought impacts through new storage construction (USBR 2008). However, in a bid to return management decisions to local control, two historically adversarial groups—the Yakama Nation and Roza Irrigation District—came together to create a draft plan for integrated water management in the basin (Vickers and Ebhart 2023). This draft and the collaborative intent from which it was structured gained swift approval from a host of stakeholder groups in the basin and led to the state authorizing $132 million to fund the initial phase of the proposed plan in 2013 (Murkowski 2017).

Next steps: sustaining collaborative efforts and broadening participation

The initial success of this Yakima Basin Integrated Plan has led to the creation and persistence of a working group made up of federal, state, tribal, and local entities who aim to work together to restore fisheries, improve the reliability of irrigation and municipal supplies, and enhance regional resilience (Vickers and Ebhart 2023). Focused on seven elements, including fish passage, surface water storage, ecosystem protection and restoration, groundwater storage, water conservation, infrastructure and operational changes, and market reallocation, this working group has secured billions of dollars in support to tackle long-term goals that prioritize a jointly defined and managed river basin (Vickers and Ebhart 2023). New storage projects under consideration include the Wymer Dam and Reservoir project and the Bumping Reservoir Enlargement project, which would collectively provide storage for 250,000 acre-feet of surface water to help toward the Basin’s 450,000 acre-feet goal (WA ECY 2020).

Despite this innovative plan and the increased interaction of diverse actors within the basin, water security remains a critical concern looking into the future. Water resilience is intrinsically connected to other dimensions of environmental, community, and regional well-being. Addressing resilience within one sector, such as water, may actually lead to lock-in in a broader system context if these wider connections are not considered and incorporated. Communities within the basin are wrestling with a complex set of challenges related to demographic shifts, inequality, housing, food security, healthcare, heat stress for crops and workers, and wildfire and related air quality concerns. Fluctuations in water availability have implications for these issues. Unless these interconnections are addressed, innovative water management in one arena may end up being a silo that doesn’t connect to broader regional resilience.

Another dimension to explore in future steps is who directs guided transformations. Whereas those in leadership roles regarding governance and regional natural resource and ecosystem management may be in key positions to help oversee these processes, the perspectives and active participation of people in less formal institutional roles but with key informal community positions are of critical importance if the region is to move forward in an interconnected way (Elmendorf and Luloff 2006). An assessment of community and environmental well-being is underway for the basin, built largely on diverse local perspectives within and beyond formal local and regional governance. A diverse set of actors involved in guiding transformations is likely to be more successful in addressing the complex challenges the region faces.

Example 3: Indigenous food, energy, and water security and sovereignty through solar greenhouse technology

The Navajo Nation, whose Indigenous name is Diné, is the largest tribe in the USA and has the largest reservation located in the southwestern USA. About 35% of homes in the Navajo Nation are not connected to central power or drinking water systems (Glennon 2023). Lack of connection is largely due to low population density (<2.7 people/km²), lack of available sustainable and effective technologies, and economic practicalities. The Navajo Nation is a rural food desert, with approximately 14 grocery stores located within 64,750 km² of tribal lands, serving nearly 200,000 tribal citizens (Bennion et al. 2022).

Lock-in: centralized infrastructure

Several variables lock in the relative lack of access to food and water resources on the Navajo Nation, the most obvious being the continued colonialism and the dispossession of Native people of their land and resources. Of immediate relevance here is how more colonial-based paradigms for food, energy, and water infrastructure tend to work with large, centralized structures and grids. Examples include supermarkets and roads, coal-fired power plants and powerlines, and water-treatment plants and pipelines. None of these approaches work well in place-based communities with highly distributed rural populations spanning hundreds of kilometers of rugged landscape.

Window of opportunity: COVID-19

The health and societal impacts of COVID-19 on Indigenous communities have been wide ranging and well documented (Yellow Horse et al. 2020, Howard-Bobiwash et al. 2021, Tai et al. 2021, Wang 2021, Allison-Burbank et al. 2022). Among the most severely impacted communities during the early phase of the pandemic was the Navajo Nation. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Navajo communities was significantly exacerbated by existing food-energy-water (FEW) insecurities. Finding sustainable FEW solutions has necessitated a transformative and resilient community response that has relied upon Indigenous frameworks and knowledge. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted these vulnerabilities, creating a window of opportunity for the investment of resources.

Guided transformation: Indigenous food-energy-water systems

In 2017, the University of Arizona received a grant from the National Science Foundation to partner with Navajo communities to co-develop and co-design educational programs and technical solutions to FEW challenges based on a foundation of Indigenous societies, governance, and culture (Chief et al. 2021). Since 2020, the Indigenous Food, Energy, Water, Security, and Sovereignty (IndigeFEWSS) program has used place-based and data-driven strategies to mitigate COVID-19 risk factors to promote Indigenous resilience and Indigenous sovereignty. Through close collaboration with communities and Navajo Nation governance boards, focused listening sessions, and iterative co-design, fit-for-use systems have been developed and installed in Navajo communities. These university–community partnerships have resulted in the co-design and co-development of off-grid water purification units that have been housed with Navajo residents and communities (Fig. 2).

Solar panels power the water-treatment units and use pressure-driven nanofiltration and UV disinfection to treat non-potable surface or groundwater and provide water security to approximately 30 families. To date, in the Navajo Nation, at least four households have installed solar UV, and two households have installed solar nanofiltration (SNF) systems. These systems are used broadly by neighboring households to supply clean drinking water to communities. Additionally, one SNF system is installed at a chapter house where chapter officials use it for demonstration purposes and to provide a clean water resource among community members, and one system in Farmington serves for educational outreach and demonstration to community members. In these systems, excess energy produced by the photovoltaic energy systems is stored in battery storage units, which are used for nighttime illumination, water heating, cell phone charging, and more.

In addition, greenhouse units using controlled environment agriculture (CEA) technology to support year-round production of highly nutritious, high-crop-yield foods have been co-designed and co-implemented. Photovoltaic technologies for light collection and energy production, coupled with battery-based energy storage for nighttime operation and daytime autonomy on cloudy days, provide power to CEA systems, enabling their deployment in remote locations challenged with access to power. Figure 2 shows an example of a fully off-grid installed CEA hoop house.

This installation, located at the Diné College Land Grant Office (LGO) in Tsaile, Arizona, was developed in a close partnership with the Diné College LGO by both University of Arizona (UA) and Diné College students and faculty and contains multiple food-production methods that are used as training platforms for Diné College students and for local community members. As such, specific crops grown are selected to meet curricular objectives but may include tomatoes, leafy greens, or native vegetables. The place-based, co-design projects depicted in Figs. 2 and 3 have been accompanied by a series of UA-led FEW trainings with students and community members and have resulted in the co-development of curricular components suitable for K-12 and college-level implementation that re-story the ways in which Indigenous ways of knowing inform students’ understanding of food, energy, and water concepts (Shirley et al., unpublished manuscript).

Next steps: food sovereignty and community resilience

The work transforms the existing landscape of FEW insecurity and vulnerability to support Native nation building (McCarty and Lee 2014, Garcia et al. 2021) by empowering Indigenous people with FEW security through water-treatment systems and CEA technologies that provide skilled jobs and improve quality of life. Critical to sustainability and Indigenous sovereignty, therefore, is the recognition that the design and implementation of solar-powered water and greenhouse (SWG) technologies must be community driven and founded on Indigenous knowledge and Native ways of knowing. Such an approach centers Indigenous voices, interests, and perspectives. The co-developed, first-generation, research-based SWG units may be adapted to meet local food-production needs, address local and community water-quality concerns, and meet individual and/or community energy and energy-use demands at other sites. As a result, these system designs are scalable, sustainable, and site specific, thus enhancing Navajo community resilience.

Case study summary, limitations, and opportunities for further research

These three case studies demonstrate the application of the GT framework in different contexts within the Intermountain West. In the Upper Rio Grande watershed, the Las Conchas fire of 2011 created a window of opportunity, resulting in the formation of the Rio Grande Water Fund to coordinate forest restoration efforts. This was similar to the Yakima Basin, where a series of severe droughts in the early 2000s provided a window of opportunity, leading to the creation of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan, a collaborative effort to manage water resources. Each of these can be thought of as a “watershed”-scale approach, although in the case of the Rio Grande, the inclusion of portions of the San Juan basin stretches the meaning of that term. In contrast, the window of opportunity in the Navajo Nation example was the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted these vulnerabilities, creating an opportunity for the development of the IndigeFEWSS program, which implemented solar-powered water-filtration systems and controlled-environment agriculture. The scale of work conducted in this case study is smaller but with wide generalizability across tribal lands. All three cases illustrate how crises or extreme events can create windows of opportunity for transformation, although not all windows of opportunity are the result of crisis. Each case also demonstrates how innovative solutions can emerge, leading to more resilient and sustainable systems.

This article is a Synthesis piece and, as such, integrates existing elements that historically have been considered separately (in this case, SES, SETS, and STR theories) to suggest new opportunities for theory and practice. The case studies provided here illustrate the capacity of GT to help both practitioners and community partners use it as a conceptual model to understand system dynamics and identify trajectories for decision making at various scales. While hinting at possible next steps and highlighting the potential for the use of a participatory approach, the case studies themselves engage community partners in a GT framework. Further research and deployment of the GT framework with community partners are needed in order to assess the efficacy of its capacities in this respect. As the case studies demonstrate, the GT framework works conceptually at various scales; whether this holds true as a participatory approach remains to be seen when elements work collaboratively to identify system dynamics and processes, internal and external drivers, system trajectories, etc. (Bahadur et al. 2013, Padgham et al. 2015).

CONCLUSION

The GT framework offers a way to conceptualize and address complex sustainability challenges in social-ecological systems facing transformation. By integrating insights from resilience theory, SETS theory, and STR, GT provides a lens for understanding system dynamics and identifying pathways for positive change. The framework’s emphasis on windows of opportunity created by disruptions or crises shifts the focus from merely coping with disturbances to leveraging them for transformation. At the same time, GT recognizes the role of lock-ins and path dependencies in constraining change, while seeking innovations to overcome these barriers. The case studies from the Upper Rio Grande watershed, Yakima Basin, and Navajo Nation demonstrate how the GT framework can be applied across different scales and contexts to drive collaborative solutions and enhance community resilience.

Using the GT framework to help communities conceptualize those regime changes, the embedded windows of opportunities, and trajectories for driving innovation toward new system states, can translate new knowledge into action by incorporating diverse perspectives and incorporating values that prioritize community and environmental well-being. Given the dynamic nature of these systems, this is an ongoing process. Guided transformation provides a way for communities facing continual change to identify windows of opportunity, conceptualize new trajectories, and drive innovation.

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