Abstract
Strengthening ongoing bottom-up capacity building processes for local and sustainable landscape-level governance is a multi-dimensional social endeavor. One of the tasks involved – participatory rural land use planning – requires more understanding and more awareness among all stakeholders regarding the social dilemmas local people confront when responding to each other’s land-use decisions. In this paper we will analyze and discuss a version of our game SIERRA SPRINGS that is simple to play for any stakeholder that can count to 24, yet entails a complex-coordination land use game – with an extensive and yet finite set of solutions – which can mimic in a stylized form some of the dilemmas landowners could confront in a landscape planning process where there livelihoods are at stake. The game has helped researchers and players observe and reflect on the individual coordination strategies that emerge within a group in response to these stylized dilemmas. This paper (1) develops a game-theoretical approach to cooperation, competition and coordination of land uses in small rural watersheds, (2) describe the goal, rules and mechanics of the game, (3) analyzes the structure of each farms’ solution set vs. the whole watershed’s solution set, (4) derives from them the coordination dilemmas and the risk of coordination failure, (5) describes four individual coordination strategies consistently displayed by players; mapping them in a plane we have called Group-Level Coordination Space, and (6) discusses the strengths, limitations and actual and potential uses of the game both for research and as an introductory tool for stakeholders involved in participatory land use planning.
Highlights
Multifunctional mountain landscapes with diverse and appropriate spatial distribution of forested and open land uses have been the basis of local livelihoods for centuries (García-Barrios and García-Barrios 1992, 1996) and are still critical for providing important services to local and external population (Jackson et al 2009; Perfecto and Vandermeer 2010)
In this paper we will analyze and discuss a version of our game SIERRA SPRINGS that is simple to play for any stakeholder that can count to 24, yet entails a complexcoordination land use game – with an extensive and yet finite set of solutions – which can mimic in a stylized form some of the dilemmas landowners could confront in a landscape planning process where there livelihoods are at stake
In this paper we will analyze and discuss a version of SIERRA SPRINGS that is simple to play for any stakeholder that can count to 24, yet entails a complexcoordination land use game – with an extensive and yet finite set of solutions – which can mimic in a stylized form some of the dilemmas landowners could confront in a landscape planning process where there livelihoods are at stake
Summary
Multifunctional mountain landscapes with diverse and appropriate spatial distribution of forested and open land uses have been the basis of local livelihoods for centuries (García-Barrios and García-Barrios 1992, 1996) and are still critical for providing important services to local and external population (Jackson et al 2009; Perfecto and Vandermeer 2010). Such a social equilibrium is weak and stakeholders usually engage spontaneously in competition for land, land uses and other watershed resources and benefits leading to inequality (Binmore 2005) In the latter case, some agents, including the government, may be pursuing a Pareto improvement, either mildly inequitable and acceptable for all players, or strongly inequitable and unacceptable, and leading to conflict and possible losses for everyone involved (Gintis et al 2005). We could assume Player 2 to conform and choose strategy C Another possibility is that both agents may play simultaneously but having bounded rationality without any information of the game other than the “Focal Point”. No monetary returns or other relevant rewards are offered to groups who achieve the goal
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
