“Borders” as a metaphor in implementing large-scale, holistic water sustainability research

Introduction

Large-scale holistic water sustainability research is fraught with methodological challenges both in the research enterprise itself and the application of results on the ground (Aeschbach-Hertig and Gleeson 2012; Bierkins and Wada 2019; Hargrove et al. 2013; Megdal et al. 2016). Scientific approaches to realize sustainable water futures in complex systems, such as those described recently by Elias et al. (2023) and Talchabhadel et al. (2021), require integrated science combined with holistic, collaborative management by stakeholders to achieve desirable, meaningful results. While integrated science can identify possible and/or probable outcomes for water futures, it is stakeholder-driven decision-making and implementation that will determine and realize preferred outcomes for sustainability. Researchers’ knowledge alone, no matter how good, is not likely to alter stakeholder actions or probable outcomes. It will be stakeholder preferences and choices based on a myriad of factors—not just science-based information—that will determine the actual outcomes. The seemingly intractable “wicked problems” relating to water sustainability seem to persist in the face of new information and advancing science produced by research. Many of the challenges that arise in wicked problems cut across traditional boundaries (both physical and figurative), including disciplinary, biophysical, sectoral, social, and jurisdictional ones. We propose that actively identifying these boundaries and consciously developing strategies for bridging them is essential for meaningful results from integrated research and desirable real-world progress in water sustainability.

During a six-year project focused on the future of water in a region of the US/Mexico border that is characterized by increasing water scarcity as supplies dwindle and demands rise (Hargrove et al. 2023), we came to the realization that the concept of “borders,” drawn from the scholarship on international borders (Alvarez 2012; Heyman 2022), provides a useful metaphor for the challenges faced by integrated science that is aimed at water sustainability. This metaphor is useful since international borders are characterized by disparities in knowledge, understanding, language, culture, economic resources, policies/regulations, and/or value systems that shape goals and aspirations on each side of the border, and large transdisciplinary research enterprises can be characterized in similar ways with respect to the many actors and conditions that are commonly involved. Furthermore, at international borders, integration of knowledge and actions across boundaries is vital, especially when both sides draw on shared resources, such as water. We concluded that just as disparities must be breached at international borders to achieve common goals through cooperation, the many boundaries posed by integrated science must be breached for success as well. Such boundary-crossing is a difficult task in the context of integrated research. What is needed are strategies and approaches that build common understanding of the challenges and effective solutions at these boundaries. We envision the construction of “bridges” that can provide platforms for knowledge sharing, communication, and negotiation to attain more effective and sustained interaction in integrated research, similar to the impact of bridges at international borders (Alvarez 2012). Then convergence on desirable futures can occur through sustained interaction as a gradual process over time (Heyman 2022). Here we discuss some of the lessons learned in building such bridges, using a variety of familiar tools and actions to create platforms of communication, and how they can be applied to the integrated research context to achieve convergence.

Like borders, barriers among and between research scientists and the myriad of other actors who manage and use water stem from disparities in knowledge, understanding, language, culture, policies/regulations, and/or value systems that shape goals and aspirations. These can include the following:

• Disciplinary boundaries among scientists (i.e., physical versus social scientists)

• Biophysical boundaries (i.e., surface versus groundwater, different landscape positions, different land uses)

• Sectoral boundaries among users (i.e., urban versus agriculture, environmental versus agricultural)

• Social boundaries (i.e., urban versus rural, “elites” versus the marginalized)

• Jurisdictional boundaries (i.e., international, interstate, local governments)

• Research data boundaries (i.e., disparities in available data and data characteristics, amounts and forms of data across political boundaries)

These disparities at boundaries often result in miscommunication/misunderstanding and can manifest as tension, or even conflict, between water institutions, kinds of users, and notably, between scientists (Jarvis et al. 2005). For example, even if scientists agree that water moves in dynamic systems across boundaries (such as biophysical and jurisdictional ones), these boundaries and their distinctions often are still reproduced in the research enterprise (i.e., surface versus groundwater, state and international boundaries, etc.). Furthermore, where there are disparities in the availability of research data across boundaries, research products can result in what is euphemistically called the “white map syndrome”— blank space at a border where data are not readily available. While scientific boundaries are not identical to socio-political ones, in the case of water they often are related, and hence, progress on integrative communication in science will encourage and inform progress “on the ground” in water resource management. Holistic and integrated approaches to address the future sustainability of water require us to breach these boundaries for success.

In our project (Hargrove et al. 2023), we encountered several common boundaries between (1) academic disciplines; (2) surface and subsurface water, which have completely separate rules of governance and use (Hargrove et al. 2021); (3) agricultural, urban, industrial, and ecosystem services sectors of water use (Hargrove et al. 2020); and (4) the political jurisdictions of three states (Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua) in two nations (the United States and Mexico). Our proposition is that in similar integrative research efforts, it will be useful to recognize and characterize the relevant boundaries in a research enterprise and to develop strategies to address them. In our case, we attempted to breach these boundaries by building “bridges” to create platforms for communication and negotiation among and between our research team and other actors.

We summarize in table 1 some of the actions that we implemented as “building blocks for bridges” at important boundaries. Successful bridging platforms generally included a mix of various formats of in-person communications, electronic communications, group activities, and computer-based tools. These activities and tools are familiar and not new; it is how we applied them to bridge boundaries that is novel. Furthermore, the bridges were “multilane” and “multidirectional,” resulting in breaching multiple boundaries at once. We group some of the critical boundaries that are common to many large-scale research enterprises into the following categories and briefly describe their critical elements. Further, we provide some examples, but not an exhaustive treatment, of how we built bridges through which boundaries could be breached (for more detail, see Hargrove et al. [2023]).

Stakeholder Engagement. Stakeholder engagement was characterized primarily by sectoral and social boundaries. Although our focus was on agricultural use of water (funded by USDA), we strove to engage a wide range of stakeholders to represent a diversity of views across a wide spectrum of users, managers, decision-makers, influencers, and even the disenfranchised with respect to water, including environmental and social justice groups (Hargrove and Heyman 2020). We found that it was impossible to understand the future of water for agriculture without considering the dynamics of water supply and demand in the urban, industrial, and environmental sectors, as well. The primary platform that we created was face-to-face meetings with open dialogue. We engaged stakeholders from the beginning of our project, asking them to identify research questions of greatest importance and relevance to them. We continued to engage with them in an iterative fashion throughout the project, discussing results, obtaining feedback, and further refining research questions/objectives/approaches. We continually sought ongoing ways and opportunities to engage with them. We used serious games methodology to try to converge on common understanding of the problems and potential solutions, transcending the international border (Mayer et al. 2021). We added to our platform a user-friendly modeling tool that stakeholders could use to evaluate future scenarios and water futures for themselves (Garnica-Chavira et al. 2018) (available at: http://purl.org/swim). Over the course of this process, a certain level of trust, respect, and legitimacy was built. Through this platform, we engaged stakeholders directly in the planning, execution, and analyses of our research.

A limitation and challenge to this level of engagement was the time and cost involved—time required of stakeholders and of scientists. In our case, we engaged stakeholders from two US states and one Mexican state, each at a location in their home state. Farmers were a stakeholder group of high interest, but certainly they are not monolithic in their views of water. We attempted to capture diverse views by engaging both large and small farmers, those involved with high value crops, subsistence crops, etc. Their timelines of interest varied widely; some were planning to farm only one or two years and retire, while others placed a high value on passing on their farm to children and grandchildren (Hargrove and Heyman 2020). Thus, all prioritized short-term profits, but some valued long-term sustainability and family interests, as well. By comparison, marginalized populations who generally lacked access to adequate water were fragmented and often voiceless, requiring specific confidence building and recruitment. Numerous other examples can be cited, but the result was that the wide range of stakeholder interests and needs posed challenges to the research team, but also provided a more complete picture in terms of the broad range of issues and views to be considered.

Transdisciplinary, Multi-institutional Teams. The research required a large and diverse team from six institutions in the United States and Mexico. Our approach was built on working in transdisciplinary teams, focused on the problems identified by stakeholders, and cutting across sectors of users and political boundaries. Thus, the research team itself experienced challenges stemming from disciplinary, sectoral, and political boundaries. The primary platform for breaching these boundaries was frequent and regular communications and in-person working meetings. We insisted on face-to-face interactions two to three times per year, even though our scientist participation spanned four US states and one Mexican state. Electronic communications occurred between meeting times as needed. The working meetings provided a platform for teamwork in planning, execution, analyses, and syntheses of research results. As a result, our research team, representing a range of disciplines and the range of geographies of the region, functioned as a whole rather than siloed components, but the convergence into a team takes time.

As with stakeholder engagement, a limitation, and thus a challenge, for this approach is the time and cost of face-to-face scientist interaction. However, it is difficult to bridge the boundaries without it, as scientists and other participants tend to retreat to their “silos.”

International and Interstate Collaboration. International collaboration results in a number of jurisdictional boundaries, the international border being the most obvious, with all the challenges of differences in language, culture, customs, and institutions. We attempted to breach these boundaries by providing resources to attend team meetings, translation when needed, and engaging stakeholders in Mexico as well as the United States, all aimed at providing opportunity for Mexican participants (scientists and stakeholders) to fully engage in all activities. A distinctly positive element in this regard was the willingness of the funder (USDA) to provide support for equitable international participation.

Interstate collaboration similarly presented challenges stemming primarily from the significant differences in water laws and policies. Stakeholders commonly see themselves in competition and even in conflict with neighboring states for their fair share of water resources, resulting in numerous and prolonged legal challenges/lawsuits; such is the case between New Mexico and Texas. Providing equitable participation among scientists and stakeholders from both states, as well as Mexico, was a crucial element in bridging this boundary.

Expanding Domains of Interest. To bridge jurisdictional boundaries, we insisted on using biophysical regions, rather than territorial nation-states and subnational units (Moore et al. 2018), as the domain of relevant attributes, processes, dynamics, and data. Thus, our modeling work included both sides of the international border on a watershed or aquifer basis rather than a political boundary. A special challenge of this approach was that the same data or resources were not always equally available on both sides of the border. This required us to modify models or even build new models to simulate the correct biophysical unit of interest. Likewise, to simulate the surface and groundwater system as a whole required us to modify component models to make them appropriate to the conjunctive system. Again, this presented challenges in the additional time, effort, and financial resources required.

A key recognition is that for all the significant boundaries described above, building bridges and platforms of communication and negotiation in an integrative and participatory approach will inherently bridge multiple boundaries. A “one-lane bridge” will not be adequate to breach the boundaries, but multiple boundaries must be addressed simultaneously through multiple lanes. For example, stakeholder engagement is a bridge that addresses several boundaries discussed above, and that makes it a bridge worth building. On the other hand, just providing more financial resources to address the data disparity boundary without considering the other boundaries that such an effort could address would be less successful than if a few more lanes to the bridge were added and addressed other boundaries at the same time. Allowing the boundaries, systems, and participant goals to be re-envisioned can result in improved chances for convergence on successful strategies for implementation (Crystal 2023). In our case, we brought together many of the challenging pieces of the wicked water resources problem in our region and provided a coherent and holistic view of the water future, while identifying possible interventions that could improve sustainability for the future (Hargrove et al. 2023). Similar attempts based on participatory modeling in a research context or in water resources planning have been made in other situations with mixed success (Scott and Buechler 2013; Browning-Aiken and Morehouse 2011; Cai et al. 2004; Megdal et al. 2016; Kallis et al. 2006; Robles-Morua et al. 2014; Basco-Carrera 2017). A limitation of many of these published studies is that stakeholder engagement is generally focused on certain groups and not sufficiently broad to include a diversity of views; therefore, often they do not address critical boundaries between different types of stakeholders.

We do not provide our experience as a recipe or perfect formula for success. The individual building blocks (or actions) for bridging are not new or particularly novel. Instead, we contend that our experience provides insight into how to identify and approach boundaries in large-scale, holistic water sustainability projects, using the borders metaphor. Familiar approaches and tools can be used in the construction of “bridges,” providing platforms for communication and negotiation that can breach common boundaries. The usefulness of this approach in a broader context and in other situations is to be determined, but we have provided a roadmap for conceptualizing and breaching boundaries in large-scale integrated research, essential to water resources sustainability.