What is Interactional Capacity

How can it help our water systems become more resilient?

Spring of 2023 was one of the best runoff years in the Santa Fe River Watershed that I can remember in my lifetime. Not only was the Santa Fe River roaring (for us) from Lake Peak to the Rio Grande, but its tributaries like the upper Arroyo de los Chamisos and Arroyo Hondo were flowing for several weeks or longer. My partner, dog, and I made almost daily pilgrimages to different parts of the watershed, seeking the miraculous flow, trying to make the most of this rare and wondrous time. And everywhere we went, everyone else was doing the exact same thing.

Artists constructed nest-like seats out of willow branches to encourage contemplation. Families had picnics or even brought their floaties and kayaks to pooling areas. Equestrians galloped their horses through the water. Even away from the river itself, people were smiling. Small talk revolved around the river—our little Santa Fe River that so often was the butt of jokes but had suddenly been resurrected as the heart of the community. There was an inescapable and effortless joy in being connected by flowing water, our local rito, especially in its fleeting abundance.

Of course, we don’t often have the luxury of such abundance, but that connection—and potential for deepening connection—remains even at the driest of times. As I have entered the New Mexico “water world” as a young professional, I have been comforted and inspired by the deep and natural reverence New Mexicans have for water. I have also been inspired getting to know some of the many brilliant and passionate scientists, activists, stewards, and community members who are devoting their entire lives to helping solve our water management crisis.

If only our policies, plans, and systems reliably reflected and supported these shared connections, passions, and brilliance. Instead, we are still siloed by our systems, repeatedly reinventing the wheel in our separateness. We are pushed to focus on our divisions and fights over water, leaving no time to lean into connectedness or a collaborative approach deeper than occasional conferences or checklists in grant applications.

Sadly, water continues to be a “tragic commons” due to our western management systems, as it cycles through air, soil, rocks, bodies, and value systems with no regard for our arbitrary boundaries. And water is far from the only scarce resource in our field: time, personnel, funding, and interactions are all in short supply. We as water folk don’t have the resources to cultivate deep and lasting relationships with other agencies or sectors in ways that will help us build more resilient and interconnected systems. It’s hurting us.

Yet, there is a possibility that points more to Elinor Ostrom than Garrett Hardin. Decades ago, Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics for refuting Hardin’s Tragedy by proving that when stakeholders interact with each other they reliably find solutions through collaboration. But for real collaboration to occur, stakeholders must have the resources to support and prioritize interaction.

Representations of Interactional Capacity (adapted from Theodori 2005). A refers to common interest groups. B refers to the generalized action among those representing diverse interest groups around shared interests.

This is called interactional capacity: the ability of a community (of any scale) to work together and mobilize resources around shared interests in times of need.

We already have so many avenues for interaction in place, but they often feel ineffective and even performative. How can we bolster these avenues, such as local committees and coalitions housed within both agencies and community organizations? How can we ensure that these avenues are themselves interacting and working as synergistically as possible across scales and sectors?

We are in a crisis, trying to build resilience into our water systems at the eleventh hour. Now more than ever, we need our systems to work for us.  This means, for example:

• prioritizing investments of time, staff, funding, and planning toward building and sustaining trusting relationships across scales and sectors; 
• emphasizing synergies across stakeholder priorities; 
• understanding and respecting nuances in stakeholder priorities and perspectives; 
• not letting assumptions of opposition hinder good-faith collaboration efforts; 
• facilitating stakeholder engagement early and genuinely; 
• ensuring proactive government-to-government dialogue and negotiations; 
• providing and seeking out cultural literacy training and information;
• integrating diverse ways of knowing; and
• catalyzing collaboration around shared goals, values, and crises.

There are countless variables in the water cycle we can’t control or anticipate, but investing in our interactional capacity will make our systems more resilient to whatever the future holds. Investing in our interactional capacity honors the ways we are already connected, to our rivers and each other.

Morika Vorenberg Hensley is the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association, whose mission is to protect and restore the health and vibrancy of the Santa Fe River and its watershed. Mori can be reached at mori@santafewatershed.org.

Further reading: 

Flint, C.G., Henderson, L.A., Hensley, M.V., 2024. Fostering interactional resilience in social–ecological riverine landscapes: A case study from the Santa Fe River Watershed in New Mexico, US. In: Thoms, M., Fuller, I. (Eds.), Resilience and Riverine Landscapes.