Games to think about water

I created the River Basin Game aka the marbles game for different people (students, policy-makers, water scientists or farmers) at UEA in 2000 to discuss water. As well as providing experiential teaching of common property resources, the game explores the effectiveness, ownership and power of ‘water solutions’. We should be cautious about influential external experts bringing tools to manage water because (conveniently) these experts diagnose poor water management. One aim of the game is to facilitate local conversations between water users, asking ‘who among them are experts in water management – and how and why do they know that?’ Once groups of irrigators have carefully discussed cross-scale system factors that shape their water management and sharing, experts can partner to bring in new ideas and, if required, resources.

This is the highlights short video

And this is the longer video for running a workshop.

This is the powerpoint slide pack I use to introduce the river basin game, based on my Tanzania work from the early 2000s. For a manual from the early days of the game; https://www.iwmi.org/news/iwmi-working-paper-75/

And click here for rapid games designing