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© 2020 by the authors. What influences farmers' decisions to adopt agricultural technologies is an important question for international agricultural research projects. There are often interpersonal differences between women and men that influence the adoption of decisions and behaviours, but few studies in the literature focus on these factors. We describe a game-based approach to explore decision-making processes underpinning the adoption of new farming technologies and practices in Lao People's Democratic Republic. Sowing a different rice variety is the tailored technology. The game explored adoption behaviours influencing decisions on transitioning from growing glutinous rice, a traditional variety preferred for consumption, to "white" rice for commercial export to international markets. We conducted separate game-workshops with 36 women and 36 men in 4 villages of southern Laos that were transitioning from subsistence to commercial smallholder production. The gaming exposed various possible behaviours and decisions that women and men considered. Access to resources, both assets and information, was equal for all players, yet women were found to adopt new rice varieties more readily than men and to engage in cooperative behaviours in the game situation. The study highlighted the need for further gender-sensitive research into cooperation among women in the agricultural context-an understanding beneficial for countries and regions undergoing agricultural transition., Sustainability, 12 (16), ISSN:2071-1050

Despite growing industrialization, the shift to a cash economy and natural resource overexploitation, indigenous people of the Amazon region hunt and trade wildlife in order to meet their livelihood requirements. Individual strategies, shaped by the hunters' values and expectations, are changing in response to the region's economic development, but they still face the contrasting challenges of poverty and overhunting. For conservation initiatives to be implemented effectively, it is crucial to take into account people's strategies with their underlying drivers and their adaptive capabilities within a transforming socio-economic environment. To uncover hunting strategies in the Colombian Amazon and their evolution under the current transition, we co-designed a role-playing game together with the local stakeholders. The game revolves around the tension between ecological sustainability and food security—hunters' current main concern. It simulates the mosaic of activities that indigenous people perform in the wet and dry season, while also allowing for specific hunting strategies. Socio-economic conditions change while the game unfolds, opening up to emerging alternative potential scenarios suggested by the stakeholders themselves. Do hunters give up hunting when given the opportunity of an alternative income and protein source? Do institutional changes affect their livelihoods? We played the game between October and December 2016 with 39 players—all of them hunters—from 9 different communities within the Ticoya reserve. Our results show that providing alternatives would decrease overall hunting effort, but impacts are not spatially homogenous. Legalizing trade could lead to overhunting except when market rules and competition come into place. When it comes to coupled human-nature systems, the best way forward to produce socially just and resilient conservation strategies might be to trigger an adaptive process of experiential learning and scenario exploration. The use of games as “boundary objects” can guide stakeholders through the process, eliciting the plurality of their strategies, their drivers and how outside change affects them., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 7, ISSN:2296-701X

Shifting cultivation is still widespread throughout the tropics, and the main agricultural production system for the rural poor living in forest margins. Though often blamed as a main cause of both forest degradation and deforestation, it is the discontinuation of shifting cultivation, and its replacement by intensified land uses, that results in far larger negative environmental impacts. Understanding what drives this change requires us to study what motivates farmers to transition away from one system, in this case shifting cultivation (Jhum), into another, such as plantation crops. Given that decisions are made in an environment where resources, such as labour and cash, are often limited, we argue that it is important to put stakeholders in front of these investment decisions, in a safe modelling environment, and to analyse the drivers and impacts of these decisions together. In this study, we explored the resource allocation strategies of the Jhum farmers of the Karbi tribe in Northeast India. Their forested tribal lands have a very high conservation value, and any major change to the system would have dire consequences for the conservation effort of the adjacent Kaziranga National Park's rhinos, elephants and other wildlife. Together with the Jhum farmers, we developed an interactive model of the local farming system, in the form of a game. Here farmers allocate labour and cash to meet household needs, to improve their standard of living, or to invest in new opportunities like bamboo, rubber and tea. Throughout our study, it became clear that the farmers are actively striving to change their landscape, this to harness both existing and emerging economic opportunities, while improving their livelihoods. However, the trajectory of landscape change comes with a twist, investment strategies and priorities are quite surprising and the old practises that ensure food security remains unexpectedly persistent.

Understanding landscape change starts with understanding what motivates farmers to transition away from one system, shifting cultivation, into another, like plantation crops, given that they often have limited labour and money available. In this study we explored the resource allocation strategies of the farmers of the Karbi tribe in Northeast India, who practise a traditional shifting cultivation system called jhum. Through Companion Modelling, a participatory modelling framework, we developed a model of the local farming system in the form of a role playing game. Within this environment local jhum farmers participated in a simulation that covered 18 years of farming, while also allowing us to analyse the impacts of their decisions together. In the game, farmers allocated labour and cash to meet household needs, while also investing in new opportunities like bamboo, rubber and tea, or the chance to improve their living standards. When given new opportunities, the farmers were eager to embrace those options where investment costs, especially monetary investments, are low. Returns on these investments were not automatically re-invested in further long-term, more expensive and promising opportunities. Instead, most of the money is spend on improving the household living standards, and especially on the education of the next generation. The landscape changed profoundly as a result of the farmer strategies. Natural ecological succession was replaced by an improved fallow of marketable bamboo species. Plantations of tea and rubber became more prevalent as time progressed. However, old practises that ensure food security are not yet given up.

In 2014, the General Assembly of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) adopted Motion 65 that called for the protection of the vast majority of Intact Forest Landscapes (IFL) in FSC certified concessions around the Globe. To comply with Motion 65, a Regional Working Group for the Congo Basin on High Conservation Values (HCV-RWG) was established in 2016. To support its decision-making process, FSC invited a team of researchers as facilitators. The facilitation team associated Companion Modelling and MineSet. Companion Modelling is a participatory approach based on the development and use of role-playing games to support decision-making. MineSet, is a model of regional landscape change developed to explore the future of tropical forest landscapes in Central Africa over the next decades. MineSet places players in the roles of CEOs of logging and mining companies, interacting with markets, the government and NGOs, planning their activities and developing strategies to cope with the environmental, economic and social impacts of their decisions. It features all the major underlying drivers of land use change in Central Africa: demographics, economic and finance signals, governance and transparency, technological changes, and cultural differences. As the game unfolds, the players discover the complexity of the system, and devise new rules and strategies to balance development and conservation. The game and the discussion that follows enables stakeholders to share and confront their perceptions of the system, better grasp its complexities, explore alternative futures in a low-risk environment, and negotiate new forms of collective action. Taking on the role of a stakeholder has a profound impact on players' awareness and understanding of the system, and has the potential to reshape their perception on the problem at hand. This experience is a critical component of the approach and central to the learning process. Thanks to this combination, the RWG could unlock stalled negotiations, level the playing field between participants and move toward consensus. This example serves as proof of concept of the use of facilitation and games to address complex negotiations under conditions of high uncertainty and divergent interests. It shows a way to foster transformation in landscape management.

Description of the mass standardization functions

Description of the Capture-Mark-Recapture method

The conciliation between different issues such as agriculture production, biodiversity conservation and water management remains unsolved in many places in the world. As a striking example, the wet grasslands of the Marais Poitevin region (France) presents many obstacles against the integration of these issues, especially in terms of public policy design. The socio-cultural situation in this region shows a high degree of political resistance and questions the relevancy of the current Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) as an incentive for livestock farmers to adopt biodiversity friendly practices favoring the birds’ richness of the area. In this study, we explored the reasons for the poor effect of public policy using a two-fold approach based on ethnographic fieldwork and a role-playing game experiment. The ethnographic fieldwork aimed at understanding the local context and daily lives of farmers and current AES’s difficulties while the observation of the role-playing game session allowed for the exploration of current and alternative policy scenarios. The game represents an archetypal wetland that simulates the grass regeneration, water flows through a canal system and a surrounding network of cultivated plots (wheat, corn, sunflower, alfalfa) and pasture areas. The game is designed for eight players who embody their role in real life, i.e. water managers, biodiversity managers and farmers. The behaviors of the players during the session were observed and analyzed through semantic analysis. The game was structured around two scenarios to allow participants to explore, test and compare the current individual action-oriented AES with alternative collective public policy instruments. Such comparison brings new insights for public policy design. It also highlights the topic of integrated environmental management and questions the relevancy of participatory approaches in striving to resolve contradiction/dilemmas in environmental development., Land Use Policy, 97, ISSN:0264-8377, ISSN:1873-5754

Description of the Capture-Mark-Recapture method