In the face of increasing water scarcity and environmental pressures, rural communities with a tourism vocation, located in the natural regions of southern Mexico City, are struggling to preserve their ecological and cultural integrity. These communities, whose livelihoods rely on a close interaction with local aquatic ecosystems, represent complex systems where sustainability challenges cannot be addressed in isolation. This contribution presents a systemic diagnosis of organisational viability and resilience in such contexts, using the Viable System Model (VSM). The VSM is proposed as a reflective tool to support capacity-building processes that enhance the internal coherence and adaptive intelligence of these systems. Drawing on previous empirical findings and systemic modelling, an abstract representation is developed of tourism–water systems as organisational structures with emerging teleologies. Additionally, the use of a rich picture methodology made it possible to uncover relationships between entrepreneurship, weak institutional coordination, and fragmented environmental policies. This vision is interpreted through the lens of the VSM to identify structural limitations to resilience, such as the absence of coordination mechanisms and the disconnect between short-term responses and long-term sustainable strategies. The relevance of developing recursive governance structures is also explored, particularly those capable of managing complexity at multiple levels, in alignment with shared values such as water stewardship, ecological responsibility, and community self-determination. By situating rural tourism communities as viable systems in need of structural reinforcement, this work contributes to the discussion on organisational resilience in action. It highlights the potential of the VSM not only as a diagnostic tool, but also as a means to foster systemic learning, shared sensemaking, and transformation within socioecological contexts.
Zeltzin Pérez Matamoros is a doctoral student in Systems Engineering at the National Polytechnic Institute, where she conducts research on sustainable water management, systemic governance, and tourism-based social entrepreneurship in rural communities. Her academic work integrates... Read More →
