Collective Action in Lake Management (CALM): an Indonesian stocktake

More than 500 lakes in Indonesia have been recognized as important parts of local economies and, at least in some cases, identity, but there is little literature on resource management and collective action. By reviewing literature and using a 'serious game', this paper aims to (1) review some of the currently used generic frameworks for understanding collective action in natural resource management, (2) recount some experiences in supporting collective action in Lake Singkarak, Sumatra and (3) describe early steps in using 'serious games' developed elsewhere to increase stakeholder understanding of how upstream land management affects lake quality and functions. Some important findings are that collective action is an important key to sustainable natural resources management and the lake as a complex social-ecological system also requires collective action of multi-stakeholders from upstream to downstream. We recommend the use of DPSIR and Javanese 'gunungan' frameworks together with 'serious game' to identify socio-ecological problems and build multi-stakeholder collective action. Based on our initial research experience in Lake Singkarak, this combination of methods has succeeded in finding various problems, especially different types of knowledge, ways of knowing, and learning styles from multi-stakeholders. These problems are then used as a basis for finding and forming a common understanding which is then transformed into collective action in lake management

Sustainable Agroforestry Landscape Management: Changing the Game

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