New approaches to promoting flexible and forward-looking decision making: insights from complexity science, climate change adaptation and ‘serious gaming’

This paper addresses the difficult decisions policy-makers are often tasked with in the face of an uncertain future outlook. It hopes to provide an introduction to many of the key concepts of climate change adaptation or ‘serious games’. More importantly it aims to highlight the synergies between the three disciplines and lay the foundations for further elaboration and insight. All this is while maintaining the overarching goal of empowering actors in enhancing their capabilities and level of agency to deal with climate change and uncertainty. It asks if the infrastructural investments will still be relevant in 25 years, what new markets are likely to emerge in the medium term, and how a gradual increase in average temperatures over the coming decades will affect livelihood security.

The paper describes what processes are needed to promote Flexible and Forward-looking Decision Making (FFDM). More specifically, the paper proposes a coupled game and reflection based approach, looking to capitalise on the ability of serious games to encourage experiential learning, as well as ensuring that enough time is provided to reflect on how key components of the game relate to the ‘real-world’. It also allows participants to identify their own routes forward for improving decision-making processes. It lays the groundwork for the second phase of research under the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA), who will be researching the principles outlined within, as well as trialling three separate coupled game-and reflection events across its core countries, namely Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique.