The ‘happy strategies’ game: Matching land and water interventions with community and landscape needs
Abstract
This paper presents the ‘happy strategies’ game that was developed for the Nile Basin Development Challenge (www.nilebdc.org) as a way to involve various stakeholders in identifying and matching ‘best bet’ rainwater management strategies (RMS) practices and interventions at different scales. The main objective if the game is to provide a tool for researchers and practitioners to start a dialogue on the complex issues of rainwater management. The game can be played with experts where the objective is to validate and improve the rainwater management practices knowledge base. It has proved to be particularly useful in stimulating discussion and debate among multi-disciplinary game players. It can also be played with communities and stakeholder platforms to start a dialogue about rainwater management in a particular landscape; it could be played with modelers or students to learn about decision-making problems on the ground.
The happy strategies game was developed as part of the Nile Basin Development Challenge funded by the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food. Initial versions of the game make heavy use of the landscapes, issues and concepts found in the Ethiopian Highlands.
Citation
Pfeifer, C.; Notenbaert, A.; Ballantyne, P. The ‘happy strategies’ game: Matching land and water interventions with community and landscape needs. ILRI, Nairobi, Kenya (2012) 22 pp. [NBDC Technical Report 4]
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