Games for change

The Perspective, which has just been published in the journal Nature Sustainability and in which two Gembloux Agro Bio-Tech researchers participated (Cédric Vermeulen and Jean-François Bastin), highlights how games can improve decision-making for complex, multi-stakeholder climate and environmental problems.

Environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change affect billions of people worldwide. Scientists document these trends, explain their causes and warn of future consequences. Through models and scenarios, they propose actions to reverse the trends. Yet humans are proving unwilling, unprepared or unable to change. As governments around the world struggle to meet critical environmental targets, a new paper in the journal Nature Sustainability identifies why human behaviour is impeding change and what needs to be done about it. The authors of "Strategy games to improve environmental policymaking" find that role-playing and strategy games can break the deadlock: "We will change the choices we make when we change the way we make our choices.

Integrating human behaviour rather than modelling it

Currently, the main environmental and social objectives are developed around models of human behaviour that do not take into account human action. In other words, people do not behave as the models assume.

"We need new tools to better understand ourselves and the choices we make," explained lead author Dr Claude Garcia of the University of Applied Sciences Bern and ETH Zurich. "Other models are not aligned with how people act. With games, real humans make real decisions in a context where emotions are high and the stakes can be high.

Strategy games allow players to understand how a system works by assuming the roles of different actors involved in real-world socio-environmental scenarios. The study finds that games allow players to better understand all the needs and motivations of stakeholders, which promotes dialogue and leads to the discovery of new solutions.

Choosing the right players

These types of games have been used successfully to link science and policy in sectors such as health and defence. They are used for education and team building. But they have yet to be used to shape international environmental policy. The study proposes that these games have the potential to bring about large-scale change when played by powerful players, such as managers, opinion leaders or government officials. The experience gives meaning to the information contained in the rules of the game, providing information that translates into transparent and effective collective decision-making around complex issues. Played by the right people, strategy games break free from established norms and support more transparent democratic dialogues, addressing the human and social limitations of current policy-making.

The Nature Sustainability publication "Strategy games to improve environmental policymaking is available here : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00881-0