Simulation and role-playing games for social justice research Simulation et jeux de rôles pour la recherche sur la justice sociale

Simulation and role-playing games for social justice
research
Simulation et jeux de rôles pour la recherche sur la justice
sociale
                                                       Nils Ferrand, Cemagref Montpellier
                    Blair Nancarrow, Catherine Johnston, Geoff Syme, CSIRO ARCWIS Perth

Résumé
Nous discutons ici différentes approches expérimentales des questions de justice sociale pour
l’eau. Nous nous fondons sur de nombreuses enquêtes menées auprès de populations rurales
australiennes, et ayant questionné les principes considérés comme juste pour l’allocation de
l’eau. Cela a conduit à un nombre limité de principes de justice universels et situationnels,
acceptés et reconnus par les communautés locales.
A partir de ces principes de justice, et en considérant la situation réelle de gestion dans la
basse vallée de la rivière Namoi, nous avons conçu et testé un protocole de jeu pour un
groupe, intégrant une simulation couplée de la rivière et de la nappe, de l’allocation de l’eau,
de l’évolution du marché, et des exploitations individuelles. Ce système peut être utilisé selon
deux modes, simulé ou joué, avec deux phases principales :
1. La gestion de la campagne culturale, incluant l’assolement, l’irrigation et la modernisation
de l’équipement
2. Les cycles de négociation des allocations d’eau, à partir des principes de justice prédéfinis
Dans la version actuelle, le modèle de décision utilisé en mode simulé est très pauvre, et
n’inclut pas d’influences sociales. Il ne s’agit donc pas d’un système multi-agents pour sa
partie informatique ; en revanche, la situation de jeu introduit différentes formes de déviation
à la rationalité financière pure, en fonction des comportements effectifs des joueurs humains.

Ce jeu a déjà été testé et amélioré à trois reprises. Sur la base de ces premiers résultats, nous
proposons une deuxième version pour une population simulée plus simplifiée et plus
nombreuse, et incluant un modèle social. Cette simulation de type « KISS » doit permettre
d’explorer la compatibilité et l’incidence des choix de justice sociale.

Introduction
This paper addresses different approaches for dealing experimentally with social justice
issues. It is based on past field surveys made about the principle for fair allocation of water,
expressed by some Australian farmers’ population. This led to some limited classes of
universal and situational justice principle, accepted and acknowledged by local communities.
Using those justice principles, and considering actual management situation in the lower
Namoi basin, we have designed and tested a protocol of game for a group of player,
integrating a combined simulation of the river and groundwater, of the water allocation, of the
market evolution, and of the individual farms. This system can be used both in a simulated
mode and in the game, with two main phases:
    1. campaign management of the farm crop rotation, irrigation and equipment
    2. negotiation for water allocation, following the justice principles
In this first version, the rationality model of simulated decisions is very poor, and does not
include any form of social influence. It is not multi-agent as such, for the computerized part;

however, the game situation introduces that kind of deviation to pure rationality in the way
how farms are managed at the campaign time step.

The game has been tested three times and partly improved. Based on those first practical
results, we propose a second step implementation of a simplified population model, focused
directly on the social justice issue.

Social justice research for water management
The question of justice or fairness in management is critical for long term acceptability and
social stability of communities (Albrecht, 1995 ; Syme, Nancarrow, Mc Greddin, 1999; PCSI,
2004). When only environmental justice is at stake, choosing and implementing the right
methods or tools to assess and extend some specific principle is already difficult; it has been
done e.g. with spatial analysis approaches (Cooney, 1998; Sheppard, 1999). But when dealing
with an integrated notion of justice, coupling environmental, economic and equity issues, it’s
even harder, because it has to cope with the balance between individual, collective and
external interests. However, there seems to be some universality in the principles or processes
(Lind, 1994; Syme, Kals et al., 2000). Based on those first assumptions, it is possible to
define a research agenda, including comparative surveys, feedback to communities, and, later
on, experiments or decision support processes trying to find better management strategies
respecting the actual justice principles of the community. This brings us naturally to
participative approaches (Kuhn, 1999; PCSI, 2004) where it is possible to locally and
collectively formulate, discuss, agree, and implement justice principles in action systems that
have a chance to be respected.
In some past surveys within Australian farmers communities, (Syme & Nancarrow, 1999,
2004) have elicited and evaluated some universal and situational justice principles, which led
them to classify the populations into two groups: “right”, oriented toward private goods, and
“left” oriented toward public goods. Those groups have some differences in their preferences
for justice, but they on the average share similar disagreement with some principles that are,
unfortunately, currently used for policies, like the “water markets” or “prior rights”.
Universal principles                                 Situational fairness judgment
Environment for future generations                   Equality of opportunity
The right to say                                     Hard work and investment
The rights of the environment                        Historical water use
Efficient water use                                  Water markets
Prior rights                                         Water efficient management
Water markets

The notion of situation principle is directly linked to the choice of solutions that are preferred;
therefore they can constitute a good base for a management plan. But they don’t seem to be
actually chosen or even considered by policy makers, even when they are explicitly informed.
We claim (Nancarrow, Syme, 2004) that there is a need for new tools and practices that would
allow to better integrate real social justice in policy assessment and policy implementation,
and that those tools could be based on simulation and maybe experimental game sessions with
the stakeholders.

A simulation and role-playing game approach
When dealing with water management in rural communities, there had already been various
participative processes and tools developed and validated (Garin, Rinaudo, et al., 2001;
Drafting Group, 2002; Mostert, 2003; Thallieu et al., 2003). They share the property to
include a substantive role, dealing with the technical or operational content of the action

strategy, and a relational or procedural one, dealing more with the social relationships of
participants, with the existing and evolving social capital.
Among the methods, the principle of companion modelling (Bousquet et al., 2002, Barreteau,
2003) has shown its interest in various operational situations. It is based on the association of
a modelling phase and some field analysis and interactions, organized as a loop, with a co
evolution of the knowledge embedded in the models and of the stakeholders beliefs and
preferences. It is practically often based on role playing games and sometimes the use of
computer simulations, implementing the model and computing the environmental dynamics.

In our approach of social justice, we have proposed to work in two phases, the first being
described here: 1. developing and testing a simulation and game for social justice researchers
to be able to experience the protocol, and eventually benefit from it in terms of justice
research, 2. playing the game with actual stakeholders in order to improve our knowledge on
justice dynamics and also maybe to promote different management protocols.
The second kind of approach has actually already been tested, but with limited explicit
analysis of the social justice question (Barreteau, 1998;Le Bars et al., 2004; Tisdell & al.,
2004). In those games, farmers are confronted to farm management and have sometimes to
cope with water stresses, which are computed from their individual actions. But the principle
of justice are “hidden” in the way people play.
We have chosen to follow a similar path, but to make explicit the distribution of justice
principles to the players, who have to try to respect them. The specific objective is to observe
how such explicit distribution impacts on the overall dynamic of the coupled water-society
system. The expected output is to specify management schemes that are actually compatible
with the preferred justice principles by communities, which is normally a democratic aim.

Our protocol is based on a simulator for the lower Namoi basin, including a model of the
water system, with surface and groundwater, a model of the water allocation (not market), an
external model of the market, and a separate model for each prototype farm. Farms and
farmers are described by various classical indicators. The farm model includes as control
parameters the crop rotation, the irrigation strategy and the investments for water efficiency.
From actions, we compute outcomes in terms of production, water consumption, and
economic figures. Water availability is controlled by the water model combined with the
explicit allocation policy. Hence farmers cannot always get the water they need. They also get
individually information about the environmental situation (water levels) and the socio-
economic context. Being representative of other farms in the basin, their actions are factorized
to compute the overall evolution of the basin.

The system can actually be used in two modes: either the players control their farm for all
time steps, or their management actions are simulated using a simplified decision model. In
both case, when a water crisis situation is reached, players have to start negotiating on the
base of their justice principles.
In the first case, it is the actual decision process of the players that is used, and whose record
can be kept to improve the model for the second mode.

Results
The game has been tested three times with researchers and water management experts. Some
improvements have been made thereby. The simulated mode was not included in the first
attempts; but the time consumed for yearly farm management was too high, and not enough
time could be spent for negotiations. Therefore we have introduced the multi-agent simulated
mode, and focused the game on the negotiation. However we still need to improve very much
the rationality model and the best way will probably be to spend some time with actual
farmers playing the management, and capturing main decision features.
We need also to repeat extensively the negotiation phase to improve the results on the social
justice dimension. Till now, we mainly got some prototypical discussions between the big
corporate farms and the little family ones, the first actually accepting to bear most of the
constraint, because of their economic stability, and because of the good relationships within
the playing group!

Conclusion
In this paper we introduce and discuss the issue of social justice for water management. We
propose a combined experimental protocol using simulations and games. In the fully
simulated version, agents’ decision processes are very simplified, but in the future we expect
to be able to complexify it based on real players’ decision making.
Our next step is also to develop an abstract full population simulation including the social
justice as a principle for agents’ decision, where the balance and consequences of population
types could be evaluated. Results are expected for the CABM-HEMA-SMAGET conference.

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