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International audience; The contribution of overgrazing to high-elevation rangeland degradation is a problem across the Himalayan region, and it leads to tensions among users. In the alpine areas of eastern Bhutan, 2 communities of settled and seminomadic herders have been engaged in enduring open conflict over access to a large natural pasture. To reestablish a communication channel between these communities, a participatory modeling and simulation process was implemented with the concerned stakeholders. A training workshop on this collaborative approach and its key tools, particularly computer-assisted role-playing games, was attended by research and extension officers and was immediately followed by a field workshop attended by 6 herders from each community. The participants used their empirical knowledge to improve the relevance of the spatial distribution of the land degradation problem on the proposed game board. They also established a link between the features and rules of the role-playing game and the actual circumstances of the rangeland. The gaming sessions allowed the participants to share their respective viewpoints on the land degradation process in a nonthreatening environment. The assessment of the field workshop identified multiple effects regarding awareness of the problem, participants' confidence, colearning, and mutual trust. This intervention enabled the emergence of social capital ahead of the preparation of major development-oriented interventions in the watershed. This study demonstrates the pertinence of using simple but relevant abstract models, codesigned with their users, to mitigate tensions between parties in conflict over the use of renewable natural resources.

International audience; In this chapter, we propose a new kind of participatory device designed as a serious game suitable for geoprospective workshops and dedicated to help the setting of multiscale and multisectoral long-term adaptation plans to global change. We explain how and why we combined the concepts of the Coupled Infrastructure System with the paradigm of Multi-Agents System to build a generic conceptual model. We present the two games designed with this framework at this date and describe them precisely from their conceptual models up to examples of results obtained during the participatory sessions organized on the field with real stakeholders. The first example is about the George municipality in South Africa and sessions were organized in coordination with South African National park institution (SAN parks). The second example is about the territory of the Scheme Of Territorial Consistency (SCOT) “South of Gard” department in France and sessions were organized with the SCOT “South of Gard” and other institutions.

Forests across the world stand at a crossroads where climate and land-use changes are shaping their future. Despite demonstrations of political will and global efforts, forest loss, fragmentation, and degradation continue unabated. No clear evidence exists to suggest that these initiatives are working. A key reason for this apparent ineffectiveness could lie in the failure to recognize the agency of all stakeholders involved. Landscapes do not happen. We shape them. Forest transitions are social and behavioral before they are ecological. Decision makers need to integrate better representations of people's agency in their mental models. A possible pathway to overcome this barrier involves eliciting mental models behind policy decisions to allow better representation of human agency, changing perspectives to better understand divergent points of view, and refining strategies through explicit theories of change. Games can help decision makers in all of these tasks. Why are we missing our environmental targets? A key reason might be our failure to recognize the agency of people. Landscapes do not happen. We shape them. Forest transitions are the product of the decisions that humans make. A better representation of agency in the mental models of decision makers can overcome this weakness. Making mental models explicit, changing vantage points, and refining strategies could achieve better results than trying to define common visions. Games can help in all of these tasks.

International audience; After the Khmer Rouge regime a period of far-reaching national construction saw Cambodia embrace the “modern water” paradigm (Linton 2010). This happened through the modernization of hydraulic infrastructures with the support of international donors. In a context where water is sometimes overabundant and sometimes in deficit, the State's objective was to fully control water resources and orchestrate water abundance to increase agricultural productivity (Bookchin 1977). This “modernization” aimed as much as it led Cambodia to join a dynamic of globalization driving local farmers to embrace a search for increasing the production of unprocessed products destined for export to the sub-region or to Europe.Downstream of Phnom Penh, water control can be considered as a poison and an antidote (Bookchin 1977). It must be evacuated as soon as possible during the rainy season to limit the impact of floods but, at the same time, there is a need to store water for dry season cultivation. This pharmacone of Homer's mythology has lead to lose sight of the unifying role of water as the rehabilitation of earthen canals, locally called Preks, has translated into the establishment of physical barriers in an otherwise continuous landscape, leading to individualization of practices and a threat to the commons. The area located downstream of Phnom Penh lies between the Bassac and the Mekong river that both flow southwards. Perpendicular to the rivers are “preks” that cut through a landscape made of two main “use-units’. Close to the river bank, the first area, chamkar, is slightly elevated and rarely flooded; further, the boeung, is a floodplain in which several preks drain. Previously, small scale infrastructure called for collective management of resources. However, the intensification of production is nowadays reflected in the cultivation of high-value crops (fruit trees, vegetables, etc.) in a Chamkar area that needs to be ‘flood-proofed’, severing it from a boeung that is progressively being transformed from a place of temporal multiple-use (fishing and rice farming) to an area where farmers attempts to grow two rice crops a year, despite the risk of floods The quest for total water control jeopardizes the multiple-use nature of this territory, leading to the exclusion of certain communities. By developing a participatory approach called Companion Modeling (ComMod; Etienne et al. 2013), we explore the socio-spatial dynamics at work in this iconic territory. We highlight the need to reconsider socio-environmental solidarity within the prek unit, but also the need to think collectively beyond the community.References :Bookchin, Murray. Post-Scarcity Anarchism. 2. ed. Black Rose Books, No. 071. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1977. Etienne, Michel, et Collectif. Companion Modeling: A Participatory Approach to Support Sustainable Development. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013. Linton, Jamie. What Is Water?: The History of a Modern Abstraction. UBC Press, 2010.

International audience; In the context of global change, the South of Gard coastal region in southern France is building up an adaptation plan in order to reduce vulnerability to several external drivers, including demographic growth, sea rise, and a new environmental directive from the European Union. However, adaptations which would reduce the vulnerability of some stakeholders might increase that of others. To explore transfers of vulnerability and their consequences with local stakeholders, we designed a serious game where players take the roles of sectoral planners in different places and on different scales of the territory. We organized a game session with 50 elected people and experts coming from various sectors. This experiment showed that adaptations on the local regional scale make it possible to cope temporarily with the pressures of global change by transferring these pressures to other sub-regions, other sectors, or even other scales. Analyzing the game session, we observed four categories of vulnerability transfers: transfers that were prevented by anticipation, transfers that were prevented by chance (non-purposely), transfers that were limited by a reaction (a posteriori), and transfers that simply occurred. Transfers prevented by anticipation required complex integration of local and sectoral adaptations. Urban growth linked to strategic retreat adaptations, which was identified as the major pressure, could be partly dealt with by trade-offs involving negotiations between several sectors in several places and at several scales.

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

Context: While the concept of ecosystem services (ES) is well established in the scientific and policy arenas, its operationalization faces many challenges. Indeed, ES supply, demand and flow are related to ecological and social processes at multiple space and time scales, leading to complex interactions in the provision of multiple ES.Objectives: To develop a conceptual framework (CF) to facilitate the study and governance of multiple ES in agricultural social-ecological landscapes.Method: We examined the ecological and social literatures to identify how approaches at the landscape level contribute to a better understanding of ES supply, demand and flow in agricultural systems. After detailing our CF, we use a case study to illustrate how methods from different disciplines can be combined to operationalize our CF.Results: The literature suggests that the landscape level is likely to be the level of organization that will make it possible to (i) integrate different components of ES co-production, i.e. ecological processes, agricultural practices and social structures, (ii) understand interactions between stakeholders, including ES co-producers and beneficiaries, (iii) explicit ES trade-offs, i.e. social choices between ES.Conclusion: The production of multiple ES at the landscape level involves different types of interdependencies among ES co-producers and beneficiaries. These need to be addressed in concerted and integrated ways to achieve sustainable and equitable governance of agricultural landscapes.

This paper is a reflexive analysis of a three-year participatory water research project conducted in the Upper East Region (UER) of Ghana, whose explicit objective was to initiate a multi-level dialogue to support the national Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) policy framework. The transdisciplinary team adopted the Companion Modeling approach (ComMod), using role-playing games and a computerized agent-based model to support the identification of a problemshed centered on issues of river bank cultivation, erosion, and flooding, and initiate a multi-level dialogue on ways that this problemshed could be tackled. On the basis of this experience, we identify three key criteria for transdisciplinary research to support innovative water governance: (1) the iterative adaptation of tools and facilitation techniques based on feedback from participants, (2) a common understanding of the objectives pursued and the approach used among researchers, who need to explicit their posture, and crucially, (3) the co-identification of a problemshed that diverse stakeholders are interested in tackling. Finally, we argue that the context in which research is funded and conducted in the development sector constitutes a challenge for researchers to be &ldquo, participants like any other&rdquo, in the projects they coordinate, which constitutes a barrier to true transdisciplinarity.

Cet article explore les mécanismes par lesquels s’élaborent des compromis lors de la mise en oeuvre de démarches de modélisation d’accompagnement. L’analyse se base sur l’application de cette démarche dans le cadre de la mise en place du Plan d’Aménagement des Pêcheries de courbine en Mauritanie. La mise au point de ce plan est une procédure réglementaire qui impose la concertation avec les acteurs de la pêche pour la définition de règles de gestion. Le processus de modélisation d’accompagnement a consisté en une série d’ateliers et de temps collectifs visant à co-construire une vision partagée du système de la filière courbine et de sa ressource. Il a impliqué des représentants de l’État, des professionnels (mareyeurs, capitaines-marins, propriétaires de navires) et des scientifiques. Pour analyser la construction de compromis, plusieurs campagnes d’interviews ont été réalisées et les principaux temps collectifs ont été observés et analysés. Les résultats montrent que l’apprentissage, le dévoilement, la modification des modes d’interaction entre participants et les catégorisations sont des mécanismes qui favorisent la constitution de compromis, tout en retenant l’hypothèse que les ateliers de simulation participative sont des moments privilégiés d’évolution des perceptions. L’article analyse également comment l’articulation entre le processus habituel d’élaboration des Plan d’Aménagement des Pêcheries en Mauritanie et la démarche de modélisation d’accompagnement, produit des arènes de dialogue entre décideurs, scientifiques et usagers, qui donnent un gage de qualité au processus de délibération et un levier pour favoriser l’acceptation du plan., This article investigates the mechanisms which enable reaching a compromise during a companion modeling process. The study is based on the application of companion modeling during the implementation of the meager fishery development plan in Mauritania. The elaboration of fishery development plans is embedded in Mauritanian regulations and imposes consulting local stakeholders before enacting new management rules. The companion modeling process consisted in a set of workshops aiming at building a shared vision of the meager industry and its resources. State agents were involved in this process as well as professionals (wholesalers, ship owners and fishermen) and scientific experts. Several interview campaigns were undertaken to analyze the elaboration of compromises, and workshops were observed and analyzed. Based on the assumption that participatory simulation workshops are key moments, our results show that the mechanisms that favor reaching a compromise during a companion modeling process are : social learning, unveiling, modification of the way actors interact and actors’ categorization. This article also investigates the benefits of articulating the elaboration of a usual fishery development plan with a companion modeling process. The latter allows building dialog arena between all stakeholders of the fishing sector. By doing so, it ensures the quality of the deliberation process and favors the acceptance of the plan.

African farmers are under pressure to innovate. In the field of agricultural innovation studies,the growing dissatisfaction with the linear model of innovation transfer in which the innovationis conceived by researchers, transferred by extension agents and then adopted by farmers, pushed the researchers to look for alternatives. The recognition of actors not belonging to the scientific world as sources of innovation, the growing focus on the role of farmers and their knowledge in the innovation process and the recognition of different dimensions of innovation (beyond just new technology) influenced the way in which the academics now study innovation. In the innovation systems approach, innovation defined as a social or economical activity useful for the agricultural development, emerges in a complex system of heterogeneous actors as a result of the social learning that takes place during their interactions. This change of approach entails change in the position of farmers who are now, equally to other actors, recognized assources of innovation. But what is really the position of farmers in the most common operationalization of the AIS approach, innovation platforms? We are focusing our interest on farmers for two reasons: they are recognized as key actors for food security and they are the ultimate users of agricultural innovation, those who put it in practice. Thus the analysis of the effects of different types of interactions, learning processes and power relations on the position of farmers in the innovation process is central for this thesis. On the basis of the analysis that we conducted in the study area – the irrigation scheme El Brahmi in North West Tunisia – we designed a tool to mobilize the innovation capacity of local farmers. The proposed methodology includes elements of companion modeling, and is based on the “self-design” principle. We developed a simulation game that is co-constructed by players –dairy farmers– while they play. They develop, discuss, negotiate and test innovative solutions to reach objectives that they themselves define. While doing it, they mobilize local knowledge and become co-authors of their own learning and of the method to support their innovation process.; Les agriculteurs africains sont sous la pression d’innover. Dans le domaine de l’innovation agricole l’insatisfaction croissante avec le modèle linéaire de transfert de l’innovation technologique dans lequel l’innovation était conçue par les chercheurs, disséminée par les vulgarisateurs puis adoptée–ou non–par les agriculteurs a incité la recherche des modèles alternatifs au model linéaire. La reconnaissance des sources d’innovation hors du monde de la recherche, l’intérêt croissant au rôle des agriculteurs et leur expertise dans le processus d’innovation et la conceptualisation de l’innovation comme combinaison des plusieurs dimensions (et non seulement une nouvelle technologie) ont influencé la façon dont les académiques étudient les processus d’innovation. Dans cette thèse nous utilisons l’approche de systèmes d’innovation dans laquelle l’innovation émerge dans un système complexe des acteurs hétérogènes comme le résultat de l’apprentissage social qui a lieu pendant leurs interactions. Ce changement d’approche change la position des agriculteurs qui sont désormais reconnus comme une source d’innovation au même titre que les autres acteurs. Mais dans l’opérationnalisation de l’approche, les plateformes d’innovation, est-ce vraiment le cas ? Nous nous intéressant aux agriculteurs, d’une part comme acteurs clé pour la sécurité alimentaire et d’autre part comme les usagers finaux de l’innovation agricole, ceux qui la mettent en pratique. Ainsi l’analyse des effets de différents types d’interactions, des processus d’apprentissage et des jeux de pouvoir sur la position des agriculteurs dans le processus d’innovation est centrale pour cette thèse. A la base de l’analyse dans la zone d’étude – un périmètre irrigué El Brahmi au Nord Ouest de la Tunisie - nous avons construit un outil visant à mobiliser la capacité d’innovation des agriculteurs locaux. La méthodologie proposée contient des éléments de la modélisation d’accompagnement, et notamment s’appuie sur le principe de« self-design ». Nous avons proposé un jeu de rôle que les joueurs co-construisent en le jouant. Ils développent, discutent, négocient et testent des solutions innovantes pour atteindre les objectifs qu’ils définissent eux-mêmes. Ainsi ils mobilisent leurs connaissances locales et deviennent les co-auteurs de leur propre apprentissage et de la méthode d’appui à leur processus d’innovation.

Une modélisation d’accompagnement est en cours dans le Marais Poitevin depuis début 2012. Son objectif est la réalisation d’un jeu de rôles, avec les acteurs du territoire, permettant la conciliation entre pratiques agricoles, biodiversité aviaire et niveaux d’eau dans les fossés autour des champs et des prés. Ce rapport présente à quel stade en est l’avancée des travaux, plus de deux ans après le commencement, et explicite le déroulement de la démarche sur les 6 derniers mois. A l’été 2014, la modélisation est toujours en cours d’élaboration par l’équipe de conception avec l’espoir qu’elle soit prête d’ici l’été 2015., A companion modeling is underway in the Marais Poitevin since early 2012. Its objective is the realization of a role-playing game, with the stakeholders, focused on the reconciliation of agricultural practices, bird biodiversity and water levels around fields and meadows. This report presents at what stage is the progress of work, more than two years after the beginning, and explains the course of the process over the last 6 months. The modeling is still being developed by the research team at summer 2014 with the hope it will be ready by summer 2015.

Les questions liées à la biodiversité s’appuient sur des savoirs souvent pluridisciplinaires emprunts d’incertitudes et de controverses. Initier des élèves ou des étudiants à la complexité des processus de décision en univers incertain, voire polémique, est une voie prometteuse pour former à l’écocitoyenneté et au développement durable. Notre objet est d’analyser l'adaptation puis la transposition vers l'enseignement d’une démarche de modélisation participative mise au point par des chercheurs pour traiter de questions de gestion de la biodiversité. Les problématiques didactiques liées à cette transposition sont abordées sous plusieurs angles: l'introduction de la problématisation en éducation, la transposition didactique de savoirs élaborés par des scientifiques et, enfin, l'élaboration pour l’enseignement de jeux et situations didactiques ., Issues related to biodiversity are based on multi disciplinary knowledge where uncertainty and controversy take place. Initiating pupils or students to the complexity of decision processes in an uncertain environment is a promissory way to get them better concerned with eco-citizenship and sustainable development. We analyze how to adapt and transfer to education a participatory modeling approach developed by researchers to deal with biodiversity management issues. Three aspects of the didactic problems linked with this transfer are discussed: introducing problematic issues in education, transferring scientific knowledge in a didactical way, and elaborating didactical role-playing games

Depuis 1973 Chili a initié une politique economique néoliberale. Ce modèle économique a affecté l'éducation, la santé et toutes les activités économiques y compris l'agriculture. Sans planification les revenus par habitant ont beaucoup augmenté (US$14510/par an/per capita) par rapport aux autres pays de l'Amerique Latine, mais la distribution des salaires est devenue extrêmement inégale (Gini coef.=0.55). La distribution de la proprieté de la terre suit une courbe encore pire (Gini Coeff.=0.95 dans certaines régions). Les agricultures à échelle locale, ou agricultures familiales, reçoivent peu d'aide de l'Etat. Progressivement les terres sont vendues et rapidement transformées en monocultures d'exportation. Les agriculteurs deviennent alors des travailleurs de l'agroindustrie. Le quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) est une plante très nutritive, cultivée depuis 7 mille ans dans les Andes. Bien qu'ayant disparu lors de la conquête espagnole il a pu être transmis par les Incas aux cultures chiliennes, à des groupes de population vivant dans des contextes agroécologiques très variés entre le 18°S (altiplano) jusqu'au 41ºS (Ile de Chiloé). La culture du quinoa s'est maintenue dans des zones isolées où l'accessibilité par route était impossible durant l'hiver, là où les supermarchés ne pouvaient pas s'établir. Le quinoa est devenu un aliment de base pour ces populations et il a échappé à l'agriculture de marché qui ne favorisait pas sa culture. Les 1470 hectares du quinoa au Chili (2007) pourraient augmenter comme pour le Pérou, l'Équateur ou la Bolivie qui cultivent plus de 54 milles hectares de sous la certification biologique pour l'exportation. Ce scénario moderne pourrait aider à réactiver sa culture au Chili. Mais l'absence d'organisations paysannes constitue un frein important. La biodiversité de récolte est mal connue et la culture de masse pourrait plus loin la réduire à moins que de la connaissance de cette diversité pourrait aider à créer la conscience de son importance. La diversité biologique est très mal connue pour cette plante et si la surface cultivée augmente la diversité génétique pourrait encore diminuer, à moins que la reconnaissance/recherche-action de sa diversité génétique élevée aide à prendre conscience de son importance.

International audience; The use of agent-based models (ABMs) for investigating land-use science questions has been increasing dramatically over the last decade. Modelers have moved from ‘proofs of existence’ toy models to case-specific, multi-scaled, multi-actor, and data-intensive models of land-use and land-cover change. An international workshop, titled ‘Multi-Agent Modeling and Collaborative Planning—Method2Method Workshop’, was held in Bonn in 2005 in order to bring together researchers using different data collection approaches to informing agent-based models. Participants identified a typology of five approaches to empirically inform ABMs for land use science: sample surveys, participant observation, field and laboratory experiments, companion modeling, and GIS and remotely sensed data. This paper reviews these five approaches to informing ABMs, provides a corresponding case study describing the model usage of these approaches, the types of data each approach produces, the types of questions those data can answer, and an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of those data for use in an ABM.

We used multi-agent systems (MAS), following the companion modeling method, to facilitate water management negotiations in Bhutan. We show how this methodology helped resolve a conflict over the sharing of water resources by establishing a concrete agreement and creating an institution for collective watershed management. The conceptual model begins with a role-playing game (RPG). The stakeholders play the game, thus validating the proposed environment, the behavioral rules, and the emergent properties of the game. It is then relatively easy to translate the RPG into computerized MAS that allow different scenarios to be explored. After this first step in the MAS model, stakeholders then create an institution. A second model is developed to facilitate this process. We conclude by discussing the relationship between the models and reality, as well as the use of MAS as a mediation tool and the social process. (Resume d'auteur)

International audience; This paper describes how the Cormas platform has been used for 12 years as an artefact to foster learning about agent-based simulation for renewable resource management. Among the existing generic agent-based simulation platforms, Cormas occupies a tiny, yet lively, place. Thanks to regular training sessions and an electronic forum, a community of users has been gradually established that has enabled a sharing of ideas, practices and knowledge, and the emergence of a genuine community of practice whose members are particularly interested in participatory agent-based simulation.