Transforming collapsing arid river systems: Moving from deterministic approaches to complex adaptive governance

• Current river basin governance is entrenched in technocratic paradigms that stifle adaptive and transformative resilience. • Examples show sociocultural, legal-political, ecohydrological or techno-economic transformations in global river systems. • The Cynefin framework is applied to river basin decision-making and tools are identified for different contexts. • Complex adaptive river governance involves redefining the problem from water allocation concerns to land use transitions. This article examines the current conceptual and theoretical foundations of river governance. Current river governance approaches have proven inadequate and insufficient to address compounding effects of climate change, invasive species, biodiversity declines, environmental degradation and burgeoning anthropogenic needs. In arid and semi-arid regions, water-limited ecohydrology makes the river systems more vulnerable and can trigger non-linear responses. To counter this, I first offer transformative possibilities spanning sociocultural, legal-political, ecohydrological and techno-economic realms. Next, I discuss the deeper social psychological aspects of governance for transformation. Finally, using the case example of the Colorado River and the Cynefin framework for decision-making in complexity, I highlight examples of issue categories in simple, complicated, complex and chaotic categories, the decision-mechanisms, potentials and challenges of each category and pathways forward. This framework can be applied to other stressed, arid and semi-arid river systems with appropriate contextual considerations.