Can a Board Game Support Climate Adaptation?
Can a Board Game Support Climate Adaptation?
Can a Board Game Support Climate Adaptation?
By Caroline Sheedy
November 3, 2022
Summary
Using a board game as a way to cultivate climate adaptation might seem like an unorthodox endeavour.
The game was designed by New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research as a way to fuse traditional Māori knowledge and values with climate change data in order to help players brainstorm flood solutions and watch how the effects of their decisions evolve over time.
FairPlanet spoke to Dr Paula Blackett, one of the project's lead scientists, about how Marae-opoly works, what it was designed to achieve and what role can board games play in increasing awareness of and resilience to climate change.
A game allows you to make a series of decisions over a period of time, feel the consequences of those choices and experience the benefits of these choices.
So it wasn't really a board game as you know it, it was more of a collective activity, in which you could see and hear what everyone else was up to.
In a scientific paper from August 2021 you labelled the board game 'inclusive' and 'hybridised' with respect to indigenous communities.
Did you try out the board game outside New Zealand?
Reference
Odenthal, F. (2022, November 3). Marae-opoly: The board game supporting climate adaptation. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://www.fairplanet.org/story/can-a-board-game-support-climate-adaptation/