Project Team

Project Summary

Emerging research suggests that collaborative learning games can be useful in addressing environmental management conflicts, particularly those that involve common resources. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) had previously created such a game to help local agencies meet goals set forth by California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) of 2014, which transformed how stakeholders in the state manage critical groundwater supplies. Researchers in this study set out to iterate and improve upon that game and achieved promising results. 

By testing multiple approaches to the game and soliciting stakeholder feedback, Robert Goodspeed and his team concluded that introducing new roles and changing the rules to include time for group deliberation might better reflect actual groundwater management dynamics. Results from groups playing the updated game suggest the new version is effective at fostering feelings of interdependence and optimism for resource management. Perhaps most importantly, stakeholders reported that they understood more clearly how individual actions impacted others. More often than not, they recognized the need to modify their use of the shared water resources.

The results from this project suggest fostering collaboration through learning games is a powerful approach for motivating stakeholders to cooperate in the use of limited natural resources, including moving toward the goals of the SGMA. The EDF Western Water team will continue to engage water users, managers, and interested stakeholders in exercises with this updated game to advance the development of well-designed and robust groundwater sustainability plans.

News & Resources

Goodspeed R, Babbitt C, Briones ALG, Pfleiderer E, Lizundia C, Seifert CM. Learning to Manage Common Resources: Stakeholders Playing a Serious Game See Increased Interdependence in Groundwater Basin Management. Water. 2020; 12(7):1966.

The Groundwater Game: A new hands-on way to learn about groundwater management. EDF, July 18, 2019

The Environmental Defense Fund provided $11,500 of project funding in 2017.