12/4/17 Colloquium Series - Marco Janssen: “Playing Games to Save Water: Collective Action Games for Groundwater Management in Andhra Pradesh, India”

Groundwater is one of the most challenging common-pool resources to govern, resulting in resource depletion in many areas. We present an innovative use of collective-action games to not only measure propensity for cooperation, but to improve local understanding of groundwater interrelationships and stimulate collective governance of groundwater, based on a pilot study in Andhra Pradesh, India. The games simulate crop choice and consequences for the aquifer. These were followed by a community debriefing, which provided an entry point for discussing the interconnectedness of groundwater use, to affect mental models about groundwater. A slightly modified game was played in the same communities, one year later. After the games were played, a significantly higher proportion of communities adopted water registers and rules to govern groundwater, compared to other communities in the same NGO water commons program.