My research starts from a simple but inconvenient premise: Different parts of society only pay attention to environmental problems when those problems interrupt something they already care about. This is not cynicism but a structural claim about how institutions work. Understanding this, I've argued, is the prerequisite for designing governance, science, conservation programs, and policy that actually change the behaviors and systems they intend to change. I’ve found that most environmental problems get misidentified before they get mismanaged. Environmental governance fails, consistently, when it mistakes a social problem for a technical one, or mislabels a governance problem as a science communication problem, or a place gets treated like a space, or a participation process is mistaken as an effort to gain buy-in. To do something about this, I draw on systems theory, theories of place, and pragmatist philosophy to articulate the concept of social–ecological system resonance, a framework explaining how sustainability actors achieve change by aligning their interventions with the organizing logics of multiple social systems simultaneously. I examine these misfires across water resources policy, insect pollinator conservation, environmental computational modeling, citizen science, and nature-based flood solutions including dam removals, managed retreat, and levee setbacks and I’ve developed a framework for what getting it right requires.