This symposium pursued a holistic understanding of acequia irrigation in the upper Rio Grande Valley as made up of interactive, interdependent biophysical, economic, ecological, and sociocultural systems. It brought together scholars whose perspectives on comparable social-ecological systems in other parts of the world can shed light on the particular and shared features of New Mexican acequias as well as on the challenges they face. Of special interest were questions about whether and how local common resource pool management can maintain or regain resilience under conditions of accelerating integration into a global economy and climate change.