Serious games as an adaptive governance method

Decision-making in natural resource management encompasses complex social-ecological challenges, including trust, power and interests. Adaptive governance, which enhances flexibility, shared resources, and mutual understanding, is proposed as a way to overcome these challenges. Adaptive governance is determined to comprise eight elements – collaboration, coordination, social capital, community engagement, capacity development, linking knowledge and decision-making, leadership, and governance opportunities. Due to its complexity, adaptive governance relies on experimentation and learning. Experimentation, experiential learning, and adaptation are hallmarks of serious games. Serious games can be used to engage communities, individuals, and decision-makers in a safe innovation space for experimentation and learning, without real-world consequences. Serious games can be used to address the elements of adaptive governance and are a method to engage decision-makers in adaptive governance. This chapter examines how serious games draw attention to adaptive governance mechanisms, and elements, and help resolve tensions between the challenges of natural resource management.