Wetland Games

Above images: Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, wetland.games, LUMA Arles, 2024. Courtesy of the artists.

Wetland Games is an online role-playing game (RPG) supported by computer simulations. It is a digital adaption of the analogue Butorstar RPG (Mathevet, 2000) by integrating salinization process and updated with climate emergency factors for the online multiuser experience, education and negotiation. This new updated version aims to improve learning tools that enable people to understand the complex systems dynamics that impact climate and their effects on our natural and social environments.

Learning of sustainability and climate in this project are realized through wetland management for the conservation of a biodiversity. The agent-based model simulates the impacts of land management resulting from decisions made by farmers, reed harvesters, hunters, and naturalists. The model is based on an archetypal wetland made of a virtual landscape. Different water regimes are proposed, each one adapted to a particular wetland use. Land-use and water management decisions are made by the players at both estate and management-unit levels. Within the cycle of seven years these decisions are entered into the model each year as the results of the negotiation process between the players. This RPG is designed to promote people awareness of (a) biological and hydrological interdependencies and their dynamics on different spatial and temporal scales, (b) the technical and socioeconomic factors involved in the different types of land use, and (c) the usefulness of the negotiation process for establishing collective management rules. The game aims to create a continuum of learning that crosses the traditional boundaries between disciplines and allows players to conduct multipurpose experiments that contribute to their comprehensive understanding of socio-ecosystems and entanglement with climatic regimes.

This tool facilitates online educational framework in which emphasis is placed on capacity building, empowerment, information sharing, communication, and understanding. The “pluriversal perspective” is the theme underpinning this framework, providing an opportunity to create a situation in which the students or stakeholders take part in collective deliberations on land uses, conservation issues, and negotiation processes between users and public agencies. Current research in the field of environmental education focuses on individual-social group-environment relationships where the natural environment is defined as an “ecosociosystem” characterized by the interactions between its biophysical and social components (Eerkes, Colding, & Folke, 2002; Carpenter & Gunderson, 2001; Folke & Carpenter, 2002; Holling, 2001; Hungerford, Bluhm, Volk, & Ramsey, 1998). Each human agent makes choices in a particular socioeconomical context based on their own background and experience. This includes the participant’s specific knowledge of the environmental object upon which they act, the tools and techniques at their disposal, and the cultural habits and values that they defend, develop, and implement through their behavior (Boltanski & Thevenot, 1991; Crozier & Friedberg, 1977; Mermet, 1992; Santos, 1997; Sfez, 1992).

Above images: Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, wetland.games, LUMA Arles, 2024. Courtesy of the artists.

By bringing into play a participant with a certain set of values, culture, and education, who faces environmental planning problems (wetland management), into interaction with other social actors (negotiation and dialogue), the computer-based RPG enables one to explore the complex relationships between a participant, a social group, and the natural environment. In this context, the game has two educational objectives: (a) a notional objective (the acquisition of general knowledge related to the natural environment, i.e. biology, ecology, and to cultural and technical practices of land uses); and (b) a behavioral objective (the acquisition of an attentive and critical attitude, understanding the values associated with different behaviors). The game should promote awareness of (a) biological and hydrological interdependencies and their dynamics on different spatial and temporal scales, (b) the technical and socioeconomic factors involved in the different types of land use, and (c) the usefulness of a negotiation process for establishing collective site management rules.

This RPG is being developed as an educational tool targeting students and agricultural and environmental engineering students. The game comprises three submodules: (a) a topographical and hydrological module that defines the structural properties of a virtual wetland flooded by seasonal water levels, (b) an ecological module that sets reedbed and bird-population dynamics, (c) a decision module, and (d) a salinity factor – a new module to be developed during this Seed Grant. Decisions specific to each kind of activity must be made individually by each type of landscape user (farmers, reed harvesters, hunters, and naturalists). An annual decision regarding the four seasonal water levels of the wetland as a whole must also be made. This decision-making module may be modified by discussions and negotiation between players. The main challenge for the designers is to simplify the ecological processes (reedbed development through water-level management and natural-resources harvesting) and the collective dynamics of negotiation.

Above images: Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, wetland.games, LUMA Arles, 2024. Courtesy of the artists.

The virtual wetland
The online model relies on an archetypal wetland made of a virtual landscape represented by a spatial grid of 100 square cells (10 x 10), each corresponding to a uniform area of 10 ha. The landscape is symmetrically split into two estates (one private, the other public) by an embankment. Each estate is divided into eight management units (harvesting area or paddock for grazing). Players may decide to embank a management unit, which then becomes an independent hydro-functional unit. Cells are located along a topographic gradient (from -40 cm to +20 cm at 20-cm intervals) from the lake inland. Water level in the lake influences the flooding of both estates similarly. Five predefined water-management regimes are proposed, each one suiting the different land users to varying degrees. A diffusion process is then used to calculate the seasonal water level in each cell according to the embankment and the topography. Each cell also is assigned an initial type of land use that evolves according to ecological rules and users’ actions.

The game models not only the principles of wetland uses but also the underlying ecological and social processes, particularly vegetation dynamics, in relation to uses and water management. Players learn what to do through their own observations and critical thinking, fed by direct information on their activity and land-use changes provided by the game master. The game is designed for sociability and for a range of cognitive learning processes. Through the experimentation of role-playing, it involves mainly a learning-by-doing process. In this way, the game adjusts to the skills of its players, allowing the same game to meet the needs of both novices and more advanced players. The game process reveals group dynamics and relationship patterns. It allows the possibility to consider with students (or stakeholders) the steps of the negotiation process, to discuss leadership styles and conflict-resolution behaviors, and to investigate how and with what implications multi-uses and collective decisions can be crafted to an adaptive-management approach of socio-ecosystems. Education is about simple and complex cognitive learning and practical learning. The game will allow the assessment of the cognitive learning of biophysical system dynamics to see the impacts of human management on this system. Increasing the learning effectiveness of the game will call for the associated development of educational and assessment frameworks.

Above images: Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, wetland.games, LUMA Arles, 2024. Courtesy of the artists.

The project brings together MIT Climate Visions and a group of researchers from France with specific expertise. Christophe Le Page is a modeler specializing in the development of simulation tools in the context of participatory modeling approaches with stakeholders in the management of a natural resource (forest, fish, agriculture, water, etc.), particularly in the context of African and South American countries. François Bousquet is a modeler and anthropologist. Initially specializing in participatory modeling, he is now working more on integrating sensitive dimensions and attachments into environmental management in the context of socio-ecological resilience. For several years now, he has been using sensitive approaches based on forum theatre in Asia, Africa and France. Raphaël Mathevet is an ecologist and geographer by training, specializing in wetlands and the integrated management of protected areas. He is also developing and deploying interdisciplinary participatory modeling approaches and serious games in conflict situations in France, North Africa, Europe and India. He is particularly interested in the environmental stewardship of landscapes, ecological solidarity and conviviality in socio-ecological systems, drawing on the potential of relational values and animal perspectivism. The students (PhD students and Postdoc) involved in the project are developing participatory modelling approaches and serious games in order to explore the ecological and social viability of different animal species (hunted or protected birds and mammals), in collaboration with stakeholders in agriculture, hunting, the development of renewable energies and nature conservation in Spain, France, and Italy.

The expected impact of this project is to strengthen the partnership between the institutions involved in arts, science and technology by contributing to the development of new tools and the reuse of existing serious games combining different scales of organization (individual, population, species) and spatio-temporal scales. This series of visits to France (in Montpellier and in the field in the Camargue) and to MIT should cement the foundations of an international project. In addition, the transformation of the first role-playing game with the deployment of a new interface and the integration of new elements of socio-ecological dynamics (such as salinity) in the context of climate change should lead to the writing and submission of a paper for an interdisciplinary journal in 2025.

The new online tool would be applicable to other similar ecosystems in Mediterranean basin, and southern India. Wetlands under the threat of extreme exploitation, pollution and destruction of war like Kakhovka dam, peatlands in Indonesia could also be areas where the approach could be deployed with the local partners and networks.