In the Nile Basin Development Challenge, we have found that games - sometimes indeed combined with modeling - are a great way to discuss natural resource management with decision makers at various levels.
Models, and these decision-support games, are not necessarily providing a clear and well-defined solution but they are powerful teasers of important and sometimes very deep and complex conversations, and address issues in a non-conventional way and putting the onus on the participants to define their entry points. A great way to elicit collective decision-making too:
See NBDC examples:
- WAT-A-GAME (WAT-A-GAME is an open toolkit developed by IRSTEA and CIRAD which enables participants to design and run simulations for water management, policy design and education. It aims to show how water moves within a landscape, how it is used, polluted, transformed and shared by actors.) https://nilebdc.org/2013/01/20/wat-a-game-fogera/
- Happy Strategies (A game in which players need to combine a set of land and water management practices into the most compatible strategy for a specific landscape): https://clippings.ilri.org/2013/01/04/happy-strategies-game/
- Nile Goblet (an open source GIS tool that allows easily to make suitability and feasibility maps without prior GIS knowledge): https://nilebdc.org/2013/01/13/best-bet-rainwater-management-strategies-t...
In the Nile Basin Development Challenge, we have found that games - sometimes indeed combined with modeling - are a great way to discuss natural resource management with decision makers at various levels.
Models, and these decision-support games, are not necessarily providing a clear and well-defined solution but they are powerful teasers of important and sometimes very deep and complex conversations, and address issues in a non-conventional way and putting the onus on the participants to define their entry points. A great way to elicit collective decision-making too:
See NBDC examples:
- WAT-A-GAME (WAT-A-GAME is an open toolkit developed by IRSTEA and CIRAD which enables participants to design and run simulations for water management, policy design and education. It aims to show how water moves within a landscape, how it is used, polluted, transformed and shared by actors.) https://nilebdc.org/2013/01/20/wat-a-game-fogera/
- Happy Strategies (A game in which players need to combine a set of land and water management practices into the most compatible strategy for a specific landscape): https://clippings.ilri.org/2013/01/04/happy-strategies-game/
- Nile Goblet (an open source GIS tool that allows easily to make suitability and feasibility maps without prior GIS knowledge): https://nilebdc.org/2013/01/13/best-bet-rainwater-management-strategies-t...