The Global Forest Transition as a Human Affair

Abstract

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. scales: decades to centuries for changes in temperature and rainfall patterns against years and sometimes months for agriculture conversion, infrastructure development, logging operations, and political regime shifts. 5 Agriculture is the main driver of deforestation. 6,7 Net deforestation in the tropics dominates 8 with various regional drivers: 9 ranching and soybean expansion ll

Consideration of culture is vital if we are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

“…67 Beyond perceptions, the design, implementation, and acceptance of sustainable policies are engaged with and influenced by stakeholders' values. 10,30,70,71 A policy that overlooks local culture might be unworkable or, at least, unable to generate results with its original intentions. 39,72,73 For example, in Europe, a throwaway culture has been identified as a key barrier to a circular economy, which aims to prolong the life span of products by repair, reuse, and refurbishment.…”

A Game-Based Approach to Exploring Gender Differences in Smallholder Decisions to Change Farming Practices: White Rice Production in Laos

“…Nonetheless, understanding decision-making processes, and the necessary intermediate step of eliciting mental models, is a challenging task. Game-based approaches have become a popular means in the field of social-ecological research to study decision-making processes [34,35] and to understand the heterogeneity of mental model constructs [36]. Garcia et al [35] argue that role-playing games can help to elicit mental models and illustrate decision-making through concrete representations of the needs, constraints and aspirations of stakeholders.…”

“…Game-based approaches have become a popular means in the field of social-ecological research to study decision-making processes [34,35] and to understand the heterogeneity of mental model constructs [36]. Garcia et al [35] argue that role-playing games can help to elicit mental models and illustrate decision-making through concrete representations of the needs, constraints and aspirations of stakeholders. Games allow participants to grasp information more easily [37], empower local communities, elicit local knowledge and decision-making processes [38][39][40] and illuminate complex socio-ecological systems [41,42].…”

“…Games also serve as models of strategic situations, allowing participants to anticipate the consequences of actions or decisions [35]. By posing challenges and confronting players with complex situations, games can act as a reality check, whereby participants revisit their pre-existing assumptions, preconceived perceptions, values and knowledge regarding how the "system" works currently as well as how it should work or might work in the future [38,39].…”

Perspectives for multifunctional landscapes in the Amazon : Analyzing farmers’ strategies, perceptions, and scenarios in an agricultural frontier

“…Rather, landscapes and territories must be understood as integrative constructs that include human institutional, aesthetic, and economic attributes generating pathways from within, and informed by scientific endeavors (Sayer et al, 2008;Sayer et al, 2013). In this regard, strategies to facilitate a process of muddling through include engaging in scenario construction to explore possible futures and game-based approaches to establish constructive dialogues (Garcia et al, 2020).…”