Games for a new climate: experiencing the complexity of future risks

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Center Task Force Reports, a publication series that began publishing in 2009 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.This report is a product of the Pardee Center Task Force on Games for a New Climate, which met at Pardee House at Boston University in March 2012. The 12-member Task Force was convened on behalf of the Pardee Center by Visiting Research Fellow Pablo Suarez in collaboration with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre to “explore the potential of participatory, game-based processes for accelerating learning, fostering dialogue, and promoting action through real-world decisions affecting the longer-range future, with an emphasis on humanitarian and development work, particularly involving climate risk management.” Compiled and edited by Janot Mendler de Suarez, Pablo Suarez and Carina Bachofen, the report includes contributions from all of the Task Force members and provides a detailed exploration of the current and potential ways in which games can be used to help a variety of stakeholders – including subsistence farmers, humanitarian workers, scientists, policymakers, and donors – to both understand and experience the difficulty and risks involved related to decision-making in a complex and uncertain future. The dozen Task Force experts who contributed to the report represent academic institutions, humanitarian organization, other non-governmental organizations, and game design firms with backgrounds ranging from climate modeling and anthropology to community-level disaster management and national and global policymaking as well as game design.Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centr

Straddling the frontier : rural-urban linkages, livelihoods and land use dynamics in Amazonia

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Closing the gap between climate adaptation and poverty reduction frameworks

National frameworks to reduce poverty and adapt to climate change rarely, if ever, interlink. Most Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs) and National Development Strategies (NDSs) screened during a review by ODI ignore climate change issues almost entirely. Gaps and disconnects between climate adaptation and poverty reduction frameworks undermine efforts to cushion the poverty impact of climate change. More effort is needed to improve links between climate change adaptation plans and projects, and country-led poverty reduction strategies

Planning for an Uncertain Future: Promoting adaptation to climate change through flexible and forward-looking decision making

The need for decision making that is flexible, forward-looking and able to adapt to the unexpected is clear. One approach for achieving this is 'Flexible and Forward-Looking? Decision Making' (FFDM). But what is it, and how can it be operationalised in practice? This report documents the activities of the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) in seeking to strengthen FFDM among district development actors. It describes research carried out while trialling an innovative and interactive tool to promote FFDM - a 'game-enabled reflection approach' - accompanied by capacity-building activities. ACCRA undertook case studies at the district level in three countries; Uganda, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. Building on these three case studies, this report outlines key findings and makes recommendations on how to better support decision making processes for an uncertain future. It does so in view of helping to understand the use of FFDM as well as the effectiveness and limitations of a game-enabled reflection approach.

Exploring development futures in a changing climate: frontiers for development policy and practice

Climate change poses the most significant foreseeable threat to the development of humankind. Among the parts of the globe liable to be affected, the developing world is the most vulnerable to climate risks. Introducing a DPR theme issue on how development policy is responding to the increasingly pressured global climate agenda, this article reviews what is being done and still needs to be done, paying particular attention to action on three policy frontiers: (i) adaptation actions and finance, (ii) mitigation policies and their governance, and (iii) the implications for development planning. It addresses what will be needed for the development community to rise to the challenge in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference in 2009 and beyond