Suarez Leads Sessions in Ethiopia

Pardee Fellow Pablo Suarez contributed to “Making Social Protection Work for Pro-Poor Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation”, an international workshop held in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) on March 14-17, 2011. Organized by the World Bank, the UK’s Department for International Development, the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the Institute of Development Studies, this workshop included the participation of H.E. Girma Woldegiorgis, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, as well as about 120 representatives of governments, international organizations, NGOs and academia.

Dr. Pablo Suarez was invited to lead two sessions:

– “Weather or Not?”: A Game of Forecasts and Actions. Pablo facilitated this activity, created through a collaboration between the Red Cross / Red Crescent Climate Centre and the Parsons School for Design / PETLab. Playing in teams, participants confront the decision of whether to act or not in response to a science-based prediction of a disaster. As in the real world, in this game people’s decisions have consequences.

– “Creating an enabling environment for cross-sectoral implementation”: This was one of four working groups where participants identified key experiences, challenges and lessons. Pablo facilitated the day-long session with an innovative approach: two participatory games he created with Janot Mendler de Suarez and Miquel Muñoz (also a BU Pardee Fellow), designed explicitly for exploring and experiencing the trade-offs, feedbacks, rewards and disincentives present in the complex system of food aid initiatives involving multiple stakeholders. The games, inspired by a microinsurance program developed by Oxfam America called HARITA, had players interacting through a mechanism that mimics the decisions of donors, government officials, subsistence farmers and insurance companies in a drought-prone developing country. Through play, workshop participants were intensely engaged in learning and discussion of the links between disaster risk reduction, social protection, and climate change adaptation.

The World Resources Report has recently published an article by Pablo Suarez and coauthors on the use of participatory games to help people and organizations improve access, understanding, trust and utilization of information for climate adaptation.

The Pardee Center has additional expertise in the design of games for environmental and development learning purposes. Prof. Adil Najam created “Managing the Global Use of Organochlorines: A Negotiation Simulation“: over a hundred individuals from forty countries have participated in research runs, ranging from Ambassador level diplomats to environmental activists. Dr. Miquel Muñoz has created crossword puzzles (see here, and here) for the UNFCCC.