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Thematic Article
Co-developing evidence on climate justice: learning from a dilemma game on sustainability assessment
Eirini Gallou*†
eirini.gallou@strath.ac.uk
e.gallou@kent.ac.uk
Andrew Crerand‡
andrew.crerand@hotmail.com
Abstract
Climate justice recognises climate change as a global chain of cause and effect in which those most affected are often not those responsible for, or benefiting from, its drivers. Meaningful involvement of citizens and diverse stakeholders is therefore critical for assessing the socio-environmental impacts of development interventions that may impede justice, as well as identifying vulnerabilities. This article presents the development of a multi-stakeholder climate justice game based on dilemma-focused case studies, designed to build sustainability impact assessment skills within community settings. While emphasising the educational value of the game and its pilot application in postgraduate education, the paper also highlights persistent gaps in translating learning into policymaking and decision-making. It outlines key elements of game design, interdisciplinary collaboration, and approaches to assessing socio-ecological risks. By integrating the Sustainable Development Goals and adopting a value-pluralistic lens, the game broadens participation and evidence use, demonstrating its potential for democratic deliberation and advancing just transition debates. This article is published in the Thematic Collection ‘Participatory Engagement and Game Playing for Achieving Sustainable Net-Zero Transition’, edited by Jing Zhao, Eirini Gallou, and Ievgeniia Kopytsia.
Keywords
climate justicecitizensparticipationdilemma gamespolicymakingClimate justice: games for amplifying citizen voices
The concept of climate justice is rooted in the idea that climate change is not isolated events, but a series of worldwide cause and effect events where those negatively affected are not necessarily those responsible for or benefiting from the causes (Shue 2014). While climate change looks at the objective facts of the impact we are having on the planet, climate justice looks at it through a socio-economic lens and enables considerations of impacts for diverse stakeholders and their needs within a certain social system and its complexity. Game-based activities on climate justice issues (Girard et al. 2016; Lanneau 2021) allow discussions on how climate change is disproportionately impacting the economic and health welfare of different groups (Shonkoff et al. 2011; Greenpeace 2020) and open up space for mitigation actions and responsibilities (governance). While climate science educational programmes often focus on natural science principles and the measurement of effects and their gravity, the perspectives offered here open spaces for considering experienced impacts and allow for anticipatory thinking (Vervoort et al. 2022) on social impacts, around impacts of climate change within a ‘global geography’. Impacts will not be borne equally or fairly, between rich and poor, women and men, and older and younger generations, or residents of one continent versus another.
Educating citizens and students on sustainable development requires this broader lens and perspective, through which scenario-based gamified activities (Girard et al. 2016) enable an understanding of the effect of human activities on the environment through real-life situations and support experiential learning outcomes (Kolb & Kolb 2009). Such approaches also expand participants’ dialectic capacity and ability to consider ‘invisible’ (or second-order) knock-on effects on areas of human and social development (for example, education, access to health, and prerequisites for justice) (Shonkoff et al. 2011). As such, the game focuses on shaping capacity to engage in discussions with policy and government actors in cases where health and human rights are affected by unjust decisions in the context of climate-driven decision-making. The game provides participants with the experience of considering plural voices and prepares them for facilitating the involvement of citizens and multiple stakeholders in an assessment of the impact of interventions on the environment. Those interventions were identified as selected case-study dilemmas for application of the game in educational settings, but they can be replaced by consideration of real-life dilemmas in the context of citizen deliberation or discussion in citizen assemblies on potentially harmful development activities in place-based applications.
In that sense, the ‘game’ developed here aims, through its principles, to combine social and environmental vulnerability assessments as critical processes in responses by public bodies to real-life destructive processes (from mining to dam development, for example). It supports a collective ability to act on the climate emergency, to integrate social inequalities in shaping innovation for energy and sustainable resource use (as seen in Clark et al. 2000; Eakin & Luers 2006; Cutter et al. 2012; Karimi et al. 2018; Gallou 2024), and to help shape Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) competencies for learners. It supports skills like anticipatory and systemic thinking and critical thinking, and allows space for the shaping of normative competencies (Rieckmann 2018; Rieckmann & Barth 2022) through careful examination of the perspectives and values of stakeholders considered in the assessment (Stolp et al. 2002).
The Climate Justice Dilemma Game: development and purpose
The game was inspired by the need for transformative learning experiences for mixed student cohorts learning about but also shaping skills for sustainable development, under ESD principles (Rieckmann 2018). The development of the ‘Climate Justice Dilemma Game’ was started by the author (E. Gallou) at the University of Strathclyde, Centre for Sustainable Development, with the support of Prof. Tracy Morse, aiming to enrich educational offers with the contribution of student input and a focus on content that can work across disciplinary needs. It was developed in collaboration with MEng student creator (A. Crerand), working on his placement with the Centre in a context of co-creation between staff and students (Gallou & Williams 2023). The focus on developing a community of climate education ambassadors (Strachan 2023) in the University, facilitated the author in exploring new educational approaches, around systems thinking and games-based education for integrating ESD into the curriculum.
The game was designed to provide a clear way into issues linked to global climate and environmental justice through glo-cal (global–local) case-study analysis and active learning, enabling investigation of multiple sources of evidence. This approach is considered key to a view of sustainability that is entwined with ‘international development’ and equity considerations, and views sustainability as a balancing act between satisfying multiple and complex needs and criteria (across socio-economic and environmental pillars). At the same time, the game accepts the plurality of values and perspectives of local versus global stakeholders and the dynamic nature of ‘negotiating’ for benefits at both levels, for resources and management of natural resources in specific settings. In that sense, it allows for impacts to be considered by multiple stakeholder stances and viewpoints, undertaken by groups of participants, positioning them in distinct value-laden perspectives (what Ahamer et al. (2011) call an intercultural discourse). The basis of the game is a set of dilemma-filled ‘case studies’, where the development of new projects to support quality of life or engineering works to improve lifestyles may go hand in hand with waste, pollution generation, threats to biodiversity, or displacement and risks to human health. These cases bring to life the harsh realities of pollution generation and management, or loss of land or biodiversity, in the shaping of energy-efficiency projects, and other similar scenarios that typically pose ethical dilemmas, together with the need for engineering expertise to allow balanced decision-making to take place. The cases were developed by reviewing recent projects where balancing human needs for energy and resources with ecosystem health is challenging, and they were intended to cover at least four thematic areas aligned with environmental management: (1) water (quality, access); (2) energy production (nuclear, hydropower) and ecosystem impacts; (3) waste management (e-waste, plastic disposal); and (4) cases of disaster risk resilience, including displacement and resource management scenarios. A review of a wider selection of projects for which published evidence could be collated from Google Scholar, allowing for wider exploration from various countries across the globe by the student co-creator, enabled the final selection of cases to build the foundations for the dilemma game. There was a particular focus on transboundary cases of resource management or cross-country exchanges of waste, to examine aspects of global environmental justice, and, in some instances, practices informed by colonialism.
The game asks the groups to discuss and deliberate whether the projects should go ahead and under what conditions, emphasising the potential negative impacts of new interventions and identifying groups and communities that may be negatively affected by these impacts at the expense of others. It relies on the premise of sustainability being eventually a ‘balancing act’, driven/affected by the value systems and priorities of humans. There is a clear aspect of understanding corporate and shared responsibility through cases of pollution (waste, air, etc) and its impacts are integrated into the game.
The game requires aspects of imagining alternative futures and it works with significant uncertainties and gaps in the amount of evidence players have in their hands at the beginning of the process. In climate change education, students necessarily encounter approaches to uncertainty. Among other aspects, the issue has an anticipative dimension, with several scenarios for the future. In this game, the question (‘What would happen if …?’) pertains to the potential consequences of the project/case studies in the game, resonating with the issue of climate change. The notion of ‘Who is affected’ is linked with the first question to identify key affected parties and impacts on livelihoods locally and globally. Climate change itself, as a survival challenge, confronts people with the challenges of adaptation and of adaptation to futures that are uncertain (Anderson 2012: 193, van Schaik 2024).
This game also provides an opportunity to review the types of impact by categorising them under four headings (environmental, economic, cultural, health), providing an alternative to the three Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) pillars, through a critical examination, allowing for reflective and critical thinking from the students’ side. The introduction of culture and health as components aligned with the social pillar enable such reflections as well as facilitating effective use of the tool with multidisciplinary groups of students. On top of this, the seventeen SDGs are provided as a framework for mapping benefits and risks or expected harm under the pillars.
The game facilitator then invites participants to decide together and assess, using a scoring system [applied a scale from + + + + + (considerable positive effects on a scale of 1–5) to − − − − − (considerable negative effects on a scale of 1–5), with 0 meaning `no effect' on the indicators of relevance, with a minimum of three indicators examined per category across health, culture, environment, and economy] in the same way as in a risk or impact assessment exercise, providing them with an introduction to the processes of doing this as environmental managers or public/health/environmental policy professionals in the future (see, for example, Figure 1).
Figure 1.
Case-study scoring example, ‘Waste in Lagos, Nigeria’. Created by A. Crerand in 2023.
An illustrated case-study example for scoring across criteria in the dilemma game, titled ‘Waste in Lagos, Nigeria’. It features an example of scoring per category of indicators (culture, health, environment, economy) in a numeric scale and a set of guiding links to sustainable development goals to consider, as well as guiding questions for the players to consider in their decision.
The game incorporates aspects of discussion to build towards a consensus, enabling participants to gain negotiation skills and navigate uncertainty or ambiguity in future decision-making.
Finally, the game provides a clear starting point into evidence-based decision-making, inviting participants to review the relevant ‘evidence’ base around the case studies, analysed in the format of written articles, newspaper pieces, reports, etc.
Key principles and context for developing the game
Alignment with environmental and ‘sustainability’ literacy: The game works best in practice when preceded/supported by learning sessions: for example, on key aspects of climate and environmental justice, as well as aspects of environmental impact assessment (Segoni 2022) and/or health/social impact assessment tools (Gallou & Fouseki 2019). This depends on the background and existing literacy levels (Devaney et al. 2020) of the prospective players. Ecosystem service approaches can be explored and used to support student baseline learning on ‘benefits assessment’ frameworks from nature/natural resources and/or approaches to trade-off assessments in support of decision-making (Hunsberger et al. 2005; Mihaly 2009; Welp et al. 2009) that supports the generation of public good. Sustainable livelihood frameworks can be integrated into the analysis of outcomes: in HE (higher education) settings, a research project can be developed in support of student research projects, under ESD educational offers (such as VIPs—vertically integrated projects—applied at the University of Strathclyde) and learning activities using group-based inquiry, where researchers collaborate for longer periods of time on solution-oriented challenges, focusing on the key questions of climate justice.
Collaboration, deliberation, and reaching consensus: The game design predominantly falls under dilemma games and their use in climate negotiations and deliberations. The game focuses on ensuring the team members undertake specific tasks to support the evidence-based analysis and ‘pitches’. Allowing different representatives to talk on behalf of the team each round enables equal space in the deliberation and negotiation (Brown 2018) of the dilemmas.
Interdisciplinary learning for sustainability and bridging different knowledge systems: Combining players from different disciplinary backgrounds enhances the outcomes of the game and enriches the discussions. Moreover, since each group represents a different stakeholder group, the design encourages different perspectives to be shared, resulting in more ‘inclusive assessments’ being made with the case-study scenarios provided.
Resourcefulness and evidence-based decision-making: The game requires players to collate information and ensures that all the team members undertake specific tasks to support evidence-based analysis of the scenario under the ‘role-play’ approach (Ahamer 2013) and identification of the impacts or risks (desktop research is allowed as part of the first phase to support each team’s information base). In this way the game can be applied to other contexts, such as community decision-making or policymaking contexts, which focus on the same principle of informed decision-making and may seek the integration of citizen-informed decisions (Hunsberger et al. 2005; Mihaly 2009; Welp et al. 2009). Providing student participants with key links to case-study resources and making this part of the handbook support this starting point for the enquiry.
The principles above shape the learning purpose and context for the game development presented here.
Playing the game and audience-based adaptations
Playing this game within the context of a university class with postgraduate students, and especially with the intent of mixing students from diverse disciplines, increases the richness of the reflection and perspectives that add to the complexity of decision-making while ‘simulating’ real-life scenarios. It has been commented that such approaches support problem-based and research-based learning (Allen et al. 2011) to develop significant skills for the ‘world of work’. In the pilot application, participants were asked to navigate the validity and quality of the evidence resources brought to the table by other groups of stakeholders and to contradict them whenever possible with counter-evidence, engaging in a debate (see Appendix, Table 1 for the ‘phases’ of the game). This approach adds to the development of research and analytical skills, while the participants are being exposed to different ‘disciplinary value systems’ and approaches to inquiry.
Journalism students and environmental law students provided additional perspectives to the learning experience of the group activity, as they can lead the negotiation process or even add simulation elements.
In the case of environmental science, management and engineering students (the primary cohort for which the game was developed in terms of curriculum integration) would empirically provide concrete evidence on processes around assessment of environmental impacts and their expected scale.
Those audiences represent some of the diversity of actual ‘citizens or interest groups’, where, for example, environmental activists, engineers, decision-makers, and leaders may typically be consulted about the development of projects where harm to the environment or human health is assessed. The game requires at least one facilitator (educator or other) who is aware of the case-study scenarios and is able to provide support as a coach in debating and pitching activities. In the pilot application, two co-facilitators were in the room to support each stakeholder group.
The game, taking a real-life ‘simulation’ approach, enables players to assess scores given to an intervention across a set of criteria (see Appendix, Table 2 for the full categories for assessment, which are cultural, health–safety, and environmental and economic impact, with a set of generic indicators provided under each heading) based on their value system and ‘identity group’, allowing teams of activists, government officials, scientific advisors, and environmental experts to compete in evidence gathering to support their ‘cause’. A ‘pitch’ has been incorporated as part of the actual ‘competition’ to enable consensus-building through structured sharing of evidence and team judgement around the validity and power of the evidence base collected by each sub-group. In its application, three distinct groups were formed, with diverse solutions to each scenario, and one case study was used (one location and problem).
After the three pitches, each group had the chance to assess some of the criteria under each of the four categories of impact and to provide their overall decision on harm versus acceptance of harm in that case. Each group had the chance to change their original stance once they had heard the pitches and evidence from the other groups. Interestingly, the game does not include a winner–loser structure; the aim was to reach a consensus as in a real decision-making boardroom, which would minimise the harm or negative impact across the four categories and bring the other groups on-side. The facilitator or educator is in charge of encouraging the sharing of quality pitches, ensuring that adherence to criteria for assessment is followed, and ensuring that overall consensus can be achieved within the timing of the session. In that sense, the convincing power of one stakeholder group can be viewed as winning when it changes the perceptions of assessment by the other groups.
Dilemma games: questioning risks and evidence for assessing impact
The dilemmas are introduced as questions requiring a decision, for example:
An overseas government (Country X) has agreed to accept e-waste, this is a cheaper option than building and maintaining your own infrastructure to treat e-waste. To government in question also does not currently have the necessary infrastructure to treat. Should you accept the offer to dispose of e-waste?
This puts participants in a decision-making position: to accept the offer or reject it? On which criteria will they base their decision? How will they discuss their perspective and position it within their stakeholders’ viewpoint? This allows the role-play to work, but also allows for the consideration of sustainability decisions as balancing acts to be integrated through play. The game design draws inspiration from the tragedy of the commons (Hardin 1968; Ostrom 1990), and the core issues around collective action problems, which are central to understanding challenges in climate governance today. Its design is based on the tradition of dilemma games, especially applications in collective dilemmas within climate governance (Keohane & Victor 2011; Tavoni et al. 2011; Hale et al. 2013), and game theory premises on achieving cooperation in ‘competitive’ settings (Axelrod 2000).
At this stage, participants are invited to review the limited information given, discuss it with each other and the session leader, and develop a strategy to dig out more information. For example:
Where is the waste going?
How is it being treated?
Who is doing the treatment and how is it performed?
What is the financial cost of exporting compared to treating locally? Is the difference significant or negligible?
The more questions and discussion participants have, hopefully, the more informed the decision they will make. Questions may focus on the identification and assessment of risks and in some cases on the harm to the natural resources being mapped. The use of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides an initial framework for first rapidly assessing cross-cutting impact types. The next steps focus on group-led presentations of evidence in the format of pitches that may inform the initial ‘assumptions’ made. A deliberative participatory phase (Smith 2009) follows, where the groups are asked to provide feedback about other groups’ pitches, making space for dialogue but also for confrontation. This allows for dilemmas to be negotiated and for group values to be influenced. The facilitator emphasises the need for consensus in the final round of deliberation, leading the game to its completion.
Dilemma-based games in environmental education allow for certain ‘learning dimensions’ and focus on:
Ethics and responsibility: The game poses primarily value-ridden and ethical dilemmas (Giménez Thomsen 2024) or difficult questions that require a certain framing and a shared approach to reach a decision on positive versus negative impacts and a proposed balance between them that can drive real-life action. The game aligns with the ethical dimensions pertinent to sustainability education more broadly (Biedenweg et al. 2013; Sádovská 2019) and aims to promote individual responsibility in the decision-making approach.
Bias: Participants also face cognitive bias, preconceived ideas, and their own biases. For example, they may regard one country as being the polluter and target pitches with a condemnatory tone towards that country. The role of facilitator in capturing and managing potential conflict and avoiding such pitfalls is therefore important for the peaceful development of the negotiations between the groups who advocate for key negative impacts when presenting evidence. A voting system has been inserted to consolidate big discrepancies in ‘submitted evidence’ by different groups, when they are advocating for impacts with very different natures. In this approach, the diverse groups eventually assess the knowledge produced by others, validating it or not, and taking a responsible stance towards the work done by their peers as part of this assessment.
Ultimately, behavioural change and undertaking an active citizen’s role in society require them to take their own stance and to be able to argue about the benefits/harm for the environment and society to others, including dealing with uncertainties (encountered in evidence search). The endorsement of uncertainty supports a more fruitful educational context, where ambiguity is part of the enquiry. In the context of higher education institutions, for example, it is argued that some disciplinary backgrounds win from this approach. ‘Business educators need to design a learning environment that fosters comfort with ambiguity and a lack of comfort with certainty’ and ‘Transformative learning implies reflecting on personal beliefs and moving towards a position of greater awareness, aspects related with our spiritual dimension’ (Giménez Thomsen 2024).
Towards inclusive approaches to environmental risk, impact, and vulnerability assessments: the role of games
Issues of vulnerability are complex (social and environmental) and not necessarily covered in specific/targeted impact assessment processes. The game builds on this need and aims to enhance citizen and people-driven approaches to urban development as well as to enable the participatory design of new interventions around natural resources that are sensitive to the needs of the environment and communities. On the other hand, while typical impact assessment ‘tools’ (EIA, for example) are rigorous, they are also hard to use directly or to communicate to citizens, and are mainly science oriented. In fact, the division of value assessment (Stolp et al. 2002) between experts and non-experts is a common challenge in multiple scientific fields (Hølleland & Skrede 2019; Gallou 2020) and is associated with decision-making issues or lack of consensus (for example, heritage literature, experts/managers and non-experts, and the preservation of natural resources or protected areas). Social Impact Assessment (SIA) assessment tools, which fill the gap between environmental and social impacts, are applied mainly in cases of major harm to health or livelihoods in the long term (for example, dams, metal extraction, or quarries), leaving projects with less significant destructive activity uncovered (Gallou & Fouseki 2019; Gallou 2020). In that sense, the development of game-based tools and activities that enable not just the participation of citizens (Grcheva & Oktay Vehbi 2021; de Sena et al. 2024) but actual active engagement in assessment processes in real-life scenarios, holds significant value in innovations in the way we collectively manage urban commons and pool resources (Ostrom 1990).
From the perspective of teaching in higher education, gamified tools that enable the better use and understanding of risk/risk assessment (RA) processes [and lately also integrated assessments, such as socio-environmental vulnerability assessment (see Clark et al. 2000; Eakin & Luers 2006; Cutter et al. 2012; Karimi et al. 2018; Gallou 2024)], are significant for the development of cross-disciplinary collaborative skills, since RA is common to the fields of engineering and business management. The same tools, based on sophisticated, multi-criteria-based decision-making methods, underpin policy experts’ decision processes as well—and are thus especially applicable in complex sustainability problems. Integrating those principles and tools in the context of a gamified ‘multi-stakeholder assessment experience’ enables the integration of relevant disciplinary perspectives while making space for humanities and social sciences learners to engage productively with their peers, thanks to the integration of argument and evidence-based searches as well as the use of dialectic approaches (Shonkoff et al. 2011) and argumentation within the same game design.
Voices, value plurality, and co-developing informed decisions
One of the key attributes of the game responds to a well-defined challenge in impact assessments, enabling more voices and a plurality of values to inform decisions. In this paper, we primarily explain how the game design allows for multi-stakeholder voices to be heard and assessment to take place through its diversified application with either multidisciplinary taught groups or within a community setting, to help with collective decision-making. Further applications, apart from the pilot one described here, would be needed to explore its potential and its optimal use with groups of experts/non-experts (for example, actual citizens versus scientists and government officials like the group roles provided).
The tool was adapted and edited for use within disciplinary settings for a cohort in journalism studies, as a first application in a postgraduate class context within two consecutive seminar sessions lasting two to three hours, in a journalism and media studies class at the University of Strathclyde (Faculty of Humanities and Social Science). This period chosen for the pilot, was the ‘bare minimum’, to enable integration within the taught curriculum. The design of the game allows engagement in community settings and with players from diverse knowledge backgrounds and within longer periods of time (thanks to the amount of evidence and iterations to reach a possible consensus). The design of the game takes into account methodological principles of impact assessments that resonate well with environmental education needs and cut across disciplinary knowledge from at least the fields of management, politics, and engineering. Students were encouraged to focus on the evidence base of their claims and specifically to introduce core media resources that provided evidence or backed their arguments for the debate. This application emphasised multi-stakeholder perspectives and ‘truths’ (see also relevant games by Valkering et al. 2013) and respective sources of evidence that can be considered legitimate for making claims. This allowed an elaboration on on the ‘lens’ adopted for the assessment, considering impacts not only on nature and the environment but a wider lens, including aspects of economy, health, and culture. This element in particular enables wider perspectives and a ‘value pluralism’ to surface—a wider consideration of broader evidence types and sources (for example, health impact assessment, environmental impact assessment reports, government-commissioned research on feasibility studies, newspaper articles, and investigative journalism) was introduced into the evidence base.
Knowledge pluralism (Öhman 2006; Lima & Partidario 2020) and assimilation of different knowledge systems (Cash et al. 2003) underpin the achievement of sustainability in practice, as the multiple goals (represented in the SDG framework, for example) assume that expertise from different remits can be combined or reflected upon from diverse perspectives.
This strength of the design of the game allows for its use under ‘simulated’ impact assessments or where experts and non-experts can participate in shared tasks or evidence reviews, for example (Hølleland & Skrede 2019; Gallou 2020).
Teams and alternative stakeholder groups
An initial list of stakeholder groups is provided as an indication. Each case comes with some suggestions of stakeholder groups that the participants will represent when playing the game. The idea for the debate is that the group will be split into at least two sub-groups with competing or diverse interests and values. Some of the proposed sub-groups designed for the sample cases are:
Government economic advisor/policy scenarios and resource distribution team;
Risk analysts, global development analysts;
Environmental regulators;
UNHR (University Network for Human Rights) migration and forced displacement specialist;
Journalists;
Climate activist groups;
Litigation legal experts;
Chemical engineers/Electrical and energy & renewables expert engineers;
Waste management experts and environmental managers.
SDG integration
In the pilot, participants took active roles representing the groups of their choice and were asked to develop short pitches during the seminar to support their argument and provide reflection on the suggestions of the ‘opposite’ groups of stakeholders (in this case, government officers, community representatives, and independent groups of scientists). Participation was high and two teaching assistants supported group work and reflections through notetaking (by participants) across the sub-groups to ensure the propositions were well captured and could then be evidenced by searches of the literature, media pieces, and reports. These elements can be flexible and suited to the needs of the learning audience and group of participants. Alignment with the course aims was achieved in this case by integrating a media search for evidence to support the claims and arguments of each group. Counterposing this evidence, students concluded by reflecting on the different types of sources of trusted information and research used by the different groups represented in the class activity.
Assessment criteria and indicators
The assessments are supported by a set of indicators that are mapped across the four impact areas (see Appendix, Table 2) as a basic, shared indicator list (elaboration and alternatives are allowed). With this approach, consideration of multiple aspects at livelihood level is achieved: the game adopts a wider lens, including aspects of economy, health, and culture, next to typical aspects of environmental impact and safety considerations (typical in EIAs and climate impact assessment) enabling further ‘value pluralism’ and wider consideration of broader evidence types.
Preliminary and anecdotal feedback from the participants (through impressions on Post-it notes, at the end of the session), highlighted the creative and collaborative learning approach that the game brought to the class, as well as the opportunity to explore a dilemma around sustainability that was not on their radar before. One interesting element that was adjusted in the delivery of the sessions was the use of the Sustainable Development Goals as shortcuts to impact areas (that is, groups used them to rapidly identify three core negative and three positive impacts from the intervention in the dilemma case). This allowed an easier way in to discuss the four pillars and the use of indicators to assess the expected impacts in further detail. The group of students was very diverse, with participants from many countries recognising their lived experience in the country-specific dilemma of the case study used. This provoked further conversations and a motivation to lead evidence-gathering in their team to reflect ‘real-world’ actors and situations. This was encouraging in terms of student satisfaction and engagement potential. At the same time it resonates with the need for educators to support all groups equally to engage and predefine resources of interest, to enable critical discussions to take place while groups deliberate. As the focus of this paper is mostly on the design principles and launch of the game, further application evidence is needed to support claims about transformative learning potential across settings. In terms of learning for us as designers and educators, the feedback signified that the activity provided good support to the learning goals of the session and stimulated learning around the SDGs and critical thinking around the learning ‘weight’ and robustness of types of evidence, as those were questions asked by the ‘opposite’ stakeholder groups.
In the next section, we discuss further theoretical aspects of the dilemma game and how they can be improved to support learning through structured inquiry and facilitate evidence-gathering, in a process similar to ‘knowledge syntheses’. We also provide suggestions for dealing with behavioural aspects of the deliberation and how educators can be supported as facilitators in enabling consensus-reaching within the game.
Learning from the design and pilot: knowledge through inquiry and unearthing evidence
The game being presented here can be used to expand the knowledge and evidence base on impacts from development projects on environment and social/health outcomes. It forms part of wider gamified approaches for ‘doing’ research with citizens [for example, Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR)] with a focus on issues of climate justice and elicitation of experienced and/or anticipated impacts. The process allows for the learning and development of deliberation skills along the way, while it opens up space for co-creating recommendations to experts or governance officials. The exposure to processes of collective governance and to distinct value-laden perspectives [what Ahamer et al. (2011) call an intercultural discourse] is key to the educational and learning value of the game. The game can simultaneously be discussed as having shared principles with relevant dilemma games (e.g. Tavoni et al. 2011) and climate negotiation and decision-making games (`Keep Cool' board game,1 and the `En-ROADS climate simulation game')2 which focus on role-playing and collective decision-making.
Key areas
Some of the key knowledge areas and topics explored as part of the dilemmas chosen are included below, allowing for combined social and environmental considerations and the formulation of critical questions.
Affected communities, social vulnerability, and inequalities
This would delve into who is affected by the project or relevant industrial practices (for example, of management of e-waste), starting by asking who is working immediately with e-waste. What type of evidence on the worst affected group can they collate: what areas are they from? What income bracket do they belong to? What ages are they [is it all working age adults, or are the elderly and children being forced to take on some of the work due to circumstances? (Clark et al. 2000; Cutter et al. 2012; Karimi et al. 2018; Gallou 2024)]. This aspect may in fact identify the extent and severity of social and health impacts equivalent to exposure metrics in natural science.
Politics/colonialism
This discusses who is making the decisions (for example, about importing/exporting e-waste) at national and global level. What are the dynamics pulling such strings? Are there colonial links supporting the practices examined? Why are certain nations in the position to make that decision and what is the role of international trade and exchanges? Why are they making that decision and how do they support their position?
Circular economy/waste hierarchy
This would look at what actions could be taken to improve or mitigate the damage currently being done or previously done. Here the students would benefit from having attended core lectures or learning points around waste management/waste hierarchy in the place-based case studies, where harmful impacts and waste are focal in the case study.
Critical aspects for facilitators: bias, responsibility, and long-term decision-making for sustainability
Application of the game in the context of citizen-driven decision-making suggests a re-conceptualisation of public decision-making in a development context: where environmental impacts on decision-making and perception of risks may differ, there needs to be space for deliberation (Brown 2018) and for wider ‘forms’ of participation to be considered (Sinclair & Diduck 2017). The governance of a common pool of natural resources (Ostrom 1990; Gallou 2024) causes imminent dilemmas for new ways of managing resources in collaborative ways and the need to deliberate in a way similar to the value of the commons, as perceived by diverse groups of users (or non-users like, for example, future generations). The aspect of global versus local is critical for an assessment of decisions in the game. In some cases, the dilemma between local economic benefit and an increase in the global pollution burden is put to participants, prompting them to devise better ‘mediating’ solutions with a less negative impact on both scales.
Consensus, deliberation, and negotiation
Participants in the game explored ways of considering reciprocal benefits from decisions and benefits from their behaviour in negotiation, providing remuneration or compensation for harm (Black 2010) that can be requested, and other principles applied in realistically managing ‘harmful development’ through acts of mitigation (for example, mining projects and social impact assessment claims).
Furthermore, through the flexibility of the ‘scenarios’, there is space to deliberate alternative futures as the game shapes anticipatory thinking and the exploration of multiple scenarios, without requiring quantification (for example, simulation of various scenarios/models), although such tools can be employed in gamified approaches with more structured learning (Valkering et al. 2013) or in perspective-based simulations.
On top of this, participants are exposed to the following theoretical challenges linked with future-driven decision-making for common-pool resources, aligned with the way we make decisions for these:
Hyperbolic discounting
This is the way we see the present as being more significant than the future. For the majority of our evolution, it was more advantageous to pay attention to what might eat or kill us right now rather than in the future. This bias now makes it more difficult for us to act to solve slower moving, more complex problems like climate change (Rubinstein 2003).
Time and lack of concern for future generations
While we may be aware of what must be done to combat climate change, we find it difficult to justify the costs to future generations who will live longer than we do. This is an intrinsic concept for considering sustainability not only as a balancing act but also as a set of values including current and future decisions and resources.
The bystander effect
‘The rate of failure for collective cooperation increases for larger groups, along with the arising of bystander effect and a decrease in average contributions’ (Jiang et al. 2021). We frequently think that someone else will handle a crisis. From an evolutionary perspective, this worked in smaller human groups, because it was usually obvious who would defend against which threats. Today, however, this causes us to assume—often mistakenly—that our leaders must be addressing the climate change crisis. Additionally, this bias gets stronger the bigger the group is (BBC 2019).
Conclusions: crossing knowledge systems’ barriers
This article has elaborated on the design and development of a multi-stakeholder climate justice game, using dilemma case studies developed to enable the development of sustainability impact assessment skills and learning for climate justice within community settings. The game forms part of novel ways of co-creating evidence bases with citizens on climate justice issues, enabling the identification of evidence relevant to risks and vulnerabilities that need to be considered by planners, engineers, or developers of significant projects.
Aspects of collaboration between interdisciplinary groups of participants and experts from different ‘knowledge systems’ are of primary importance for enabling the integration of diverse inputs and informing approaches to assessing risk and mapping, in a way that includes potential socio-ecological vulnerabilities with the support of the citizens and communities experiencing them. The strength of the design of the game allows for its use in ‘simulated’ socio-environmental impact assessments, where experts and non-experts can participate in shared tasks or evidence reviews, for example (Hølleland & Skrede 2019; Gallou 2020). This pluralism within a ‘playful space’, welcoming non-expert voices, is related to key principles of achieving climate justice, combined with the inquisitive nature of the ‘glo-cal’ impacts of development projects. The game has been tested in the context of a diverse audience, but in a safe educational setting. The capacity of such approaches to change policy is bound to a wider diversity of players and their respective power to apply change. By sharing with ‘big players’, like ministries of the environment and high-level juries providing planning permission for such projects, the actual gap between learning and practice can be reduced. The participation of interdisciplinary professionals is key, as knowledge pluralism (Öhman 2006; Lima & Partidario 2020) and the assimilation of different knowledge systems (Cash et al. 2003) underpin the achievement of sustainability in practice.
In the context of ESD and shaping the capabilities of future generations to act as responsible citizens to fight climate change in a just way, the development of normative competencies, ethical dimensions, and a sense of responsibility are key learning outcomes for shaping sustainable behaviours (Kopnina & Meijers 2014; Murray et al. 2014). Ultimately, the ability to elicit community-driven judgements within a gamified setting enriches the toolkits of community-based participatory research approaches, with their value lying in their being able to strengthen the rigor, relevance, and reach of ‘pure’ science (Balazs & Morello-Frosch 2013). If we are to act quickly and efficiently on climate dilemmas, we need space to build our deliberative capabilities (Lorenzoni et al. 2007) and evidence-based decision-making skills to reach real-life solutions. In this game, the power of deliberation is combined with the interpretation and exploration of evidence by participants, providing a promising tool for decision-makers and educators alike to enhance environmental literacy (Devaney et al. 2020) and elicit collaborative judgements on difficult dilemmas. The power of the audience lies in the capacity of the students as future professionals later sharing the learning in diverse and global professional settings. Various adjustments of the aims and objectives of the game have been discussed in this paper; these can form the basis of adaptations for its use in diverse contexts and participant groups, allowing for flexibility and creativity.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of Professor Tracy Morse, University of Strathclyde for providing comments for development of the measuring approach and scoring framework for the game, developed as part of Andrew’s work with the Centre for Sustainable Development. The authors would like to thank Professor Lesley Henderson, University of Strathclyde for enabling the pilot application of the game as part of their taught seminars in the University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Appendix
Table 1
Phases of the game.
| 1. Dilemma exploration |
| 2. Evidence-seeking strategy (frame used to shape arguments) and gathering phase |
| 3. Team-based assessment of impacts on SDGs and four pillars |
| 4. Deliberative pitches 1—evidence |
| 5. Team-based reflection and revisions |
| 6. Deliberative pitches 2—suggested actions |
| 7. Voting |
| 8. ‘Consensus actions’ and summary of recommendations |
Table 2
Predefined set of indicators to support the analysis of case studies. Players are invited to adjust and select relevant indicators for each case. The aim of the indicators is to direct participants to gather evidence to support their arguments and seek to make robust cases for their stance. Indicators are the initial stage in the development of metrics and an assessment framework. Sadd et al. (2011) provide a structured approach to socio-environmental assessment on a place-based basis, with specific criteria and indicators that can be measured. Such approaches can be integrated in an in-depth analysis of a case study when combined with abundant localised datasets.
| Environment |
| ∙ Climate change impact (CO2 emissions, GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions and per capita effects) |
| ∙ Water use/water quality |
| ∙ Energy use (% of non-renewable sources/renewable) |
| ∙ Eco-toxicity (levels of soil or water source pollution, food contamination etc) |
| ∙ Land use changes and pressures |
| ∙ Air quality and PM2.5 concentration changes etc |
| ∙ Built infrastructure meeting environmental standards (e.g. BREAM)/CO emissions from new built reduced by %/reused materials and sustainable building practices |
| Culture |
| ∙ Number or proportion of people into forced displacement |
| ∙ Number or proportion of people rendered vulnerable financially or socially as a result of intervention |
| ∙ No of people with no access to education opportunities/disrupted education or ability to influence decisions (participation gap) |
| ∙ Impacts on loss of cultural or social infrastructure/community hubs etc or social cohesion |
| ∙ Impacts on loss of cultural traditions or historically important (migrants, children and young adults, elderly etc) |
| ∙ Ecology (species affected by loss of population etc)/biodiversity: % of habitat area destroyed or created |
| Health and safety |
| ∙ Physical health impacts: N of respiratory illnesses/Probability of illness based on exposure–distance to source |
| ∙ % of cases with health impacts from chemical pollutants/ toxicity /water being polluted |
| ∙ Mental health impacts |
| Economic |
| ∙ N of New jobs created (timeline) |
| ∙ N of New jobs for vulnerable or those left unemployed due to transition (timeline) |
| ∙ Safe jobs for % of the population/ % of people currently unemployed or not in education |
| ∙ Scale of Local apprenticeships and education of youth provided |
| ∙ Matching opportunities with job market gaps |
| ∙ Innovation and entrepreneurship fostering (new businesses, hubs etc) |
| ∙ Small or community Businesses/SMEs [small or medium enterprises] developed or sustained |
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DOI: 10.5871/jba/014.a14
Published on: 9 June 2026
Volume: 14
Issue: Issue 2
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Gallou, E. & Crerand, A. (2026), ‘Co-developing evidence on climate justice: learning from a dilemma game on sustainability assessment’, Journal of the British Academy, 14(2): a14 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/014.a14Crossref
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The civic importance of John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934) Isobel Armstrong
In the Harvard lectures that became Art as Experience (1934) Dewey developed a democratic account of art that not only expanded the range of creative experience (watching a huge digger, the architectonics of a mutually satisfactory conversation, are included in the reach of art) but developed an account of art that was vitally reciprocal, participatory and social. Maker and perceiver are equally interactive creators as they mutually develop new modes of feeling and thinking. For Dewey this relationship necessarily re-makes the experience of community and, just as important, creates a civic space for interrogation and critique. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)
17 September 2024
---------------TEAR HERE-------------- Simon Shepherd
This contribution is a record—apparently—of a presentation about the function and effects of dramatic performance within communities. It lurched from the Covid pandemic and the British government’s ‘levelling-up’ project back, over a century earlier, to the beginnings of the municipal and amateur theatre movements. These latter produced some of the earliest formulations of the idea that participation in performance-making enables self-expression and a sense of fellowship, thus building community. But, as Granville Barker, one of its greatest proponents, warned, this same activity, where it’s not rooted in the ‘hearts’ of people is merely a professional product, not ‘vital’. Which produces a dilemma for an author asked to take a live event, shared among participants, and substitute for it a journal article, civic, perhaps, but not necessarily vital. (This article is published in the thematic collection `The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)
19 September 2024
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