Sanil, Richu

Experiential learning games are increasingly applied as participatory engagement tools to improve management of the commons, strengthen self-regulation of resource use and enhance constructive interaction of resource users. Pilot studies have shown that combining games with community debriefings and technical planning instruments can support institutional and behavioral change. Nevertheless, there is poor evidence on the potential of experiential learning games to achieve impact on a larger scale. We applied a package of experiential learning tools for groundwater management in 1779 communities in five states of India. As a largely invisible common pool resource, groundwater management requires effective coordination among users. In India, this coordination is still poor which is one explanation for half of all wells showing falling water tables. Our experiential learning interventions intended to improve water users’ system understanding, strengthen water related norms, support local water governance, and trigger sustainable water management behavior. A rigid impact assessment was conducted in 472 communities in Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. Our results indicate that individuals who participated in the interventions more likely reported contributions to the maintenance of community water infrastructure. We also found that women more likely reported to participate in agricultural household decision making after playing the game. At the same time, we did not find the expected effect on knowledge, norm, and institutional change indicators. This challenges our theory of change which assumed that behavioral change follows understanding, norms and institutional change. Our results confirm the ability of experiential learning games to support collective action. At the same time, we see the need to better understand the mechanisms of how they trigger behavioral change, especially when being applied on a larger scale.

Supporting the sustainable management of commons in the face of rapidly evolving and complex challenges calls for systemic changes. For instance, addressing over-extraction of groundwater in India, with profound implications for food security, livelihoods, and economic development, depends in improved coordination among various stakeholders at different scales. Strengthening this coordination through governance mechanisms requires a good understanding of the factors driving individual and collective behavior. We offer a behavioral perspective to system transformation and apply it to the design of an intervention strategy for supporting sustainable water management and governance in India. The starting point was the question who needs to take which actions in order to improve groundwater management. In a second step, we inquired about what drives actors’ behavior paying special attention to their knowledge, motivation and agency. Based on this assessment, we co-designed and applied interventions in collaboration with NGOs, academic and government partners. At the local level, these interventions include groundwater monitoring and crop water budgeting, combined with experiential learning tools such as games for demand management, and supply side interventions to support water harvesting and recharge. At the regional level, we strengthened multi-actor platforms, built coalitions and developed the capacity of government, civil society and private sector actors to support groundwater governance. By combining these approaches, we aimed to influence water governance and management on a larger scale. Our experience illustrates how conceptual thinking can inform multi-method approaches which consider that sustainably improving groundwater management requires inter-linked behavioral changes of diverse actors. Our approach constitutes critical reflection and conceptualization, based on situated knowledge which contributes to designing better adapted and more powerful intervention strategies through informed arguments.