Abstract
Location-specific forms of agroforestry management can reduce problems in the forest–water–people nexus, by balancing upstream and downstream interests, but social and ecological finetuning is needed. New ways of achieving shared understanding of the underlying ecological and social-ecological relations is needed to adapt and contextualize generic solutions. Addressing these challenges between thirteen cases of tropical agroforestry scenario development across three continents requires exploration of generic aspects of issues, knowledge and participative approaches. Participative projects with local stakeholders increasingly use ‘serious gaming’. Although helpful, serious games so far (1) appear to be ad hoc, case dependent, with poorly defined extrapolation domains, (2) require heavy research investment, (3) have untested cultural limitations and (4) lack clarity on where and how they can be used in policy making. We classify the main forest–water–people nexus issues and the types of land-use solutions that shape local discourses and that are to be brought to life in the games. Four ‘prototype’ games will be further used to test hypotheses about the four problems identified constraining game use. The resulting generic forest–water–people games will be the outcome of the project “Scenario evaluation for sustainable agroforestry management through forest-water-people games” (SESAM), for which this article provides a preview.
Highlights
Returning to the four issues restricting use of ‘serious games’ in the context of forest–water–people nexus issues, we need to take stock of how the sustainable agroforestry management through forest-water-people games” (SESAM) program, in our current preview, will address the critique that games (1) are ad hoc with poorly defined extrapolation domains; (2) require heavy research investment from intervention experts; (3) have untested cultural limitations in where and how they can be used; and (4) lack clarity on where and how they can be used in policy making in local or global issue cycles
Four challenges have been raised to the use of serious games in addressing issues such as those in the forest–water–people nexus: games so far (1) appear to be ad hoc, case dependent, with poorly defined extrapolation domains, (2) require heavy research investment, (3) have untested cultural limitations and (4) lack clarity on where and how they can be used in policy making
The SESAM program of networked PhD research programs will be geared at credible, salient and legitimate action research designing, testing and using ‘serious games’, that are meant to (1) be systematic in their coverage of the pantropical forest–water–people nexus in its main manifestations and issues, using generic forest and tree cover transitions as continuum description rather than forest–agriculture dichotomies, supporting easy ‘localization’ of games to match local contexts, (2) use
Summary
Current understanding of the term agroforestry links plot, landscape and policy aspects of the ways farmers interact with trees [1]. In multi-stakeholder settings, games function as (social) learning tools boundary objects to discuss and concerns. Shared experience and jointly acquired knowledge in scenario evaluation scenario evaluation games may help in the emergence of coalitions for change in the real world. Game users lack clarity on where and how games relate to policy making in local and/or global issue cycles, negotiations and reforms governance instruments. (3) be cognizant of cultural the main contexts of inter-human and human–nature vary and to guide responsiblerelations game use; andto(4)guide be dimensions in which cultural contexts of relations inter-human human–nature vary explicitly adapted (oruse; adaptable) stages of local global issue (policy) cycles where responsible game and (4)tobedifferent explicitly adapted (orand adaptable) to different stages[25], of local and issues become of a political agenda, getissues debated and (partly).
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