Collaborative Solutions to Inland Freshwater Salinization

Inland freshwater salinization is an emerging and largely unregulated threat to global water security. We demonstrate how Elinor Ostrom’s Social-Ecological Systems (SES) framework for the collective management of common pool resources can guide collaborative solutions to this grand challenge. Applied to rising sodium concentrations in a drinking water source for one million people, the framework diagnosed key barriers and focused stakeholder-engaged research in three areas: (1) predictability of system dynamics, (2) shared understanding of the SES, and (3) rules-in-use for sodium management. Our findings support a Theory of Change that integrates the deductive logic of SES theory with the inductive strength of convergence research, offering a generalizable model for addressing emerging and unregulated water quality challenges.