14 DAY TRIAL // Teaching people about climate change through lectures will never work. Pablo Suarez has tested this method and seen people falling asleep in their chairs. After he threw Frisbees to the bored public gathered for a conference in Ecuador, he realized fighting climate change needs a new kind of boost to become popular.
Suddenly, following this path, his training session became more and more interactive, exploiting people's need to witness something else than the presence of dull facts supported by incomprehensible concepts and strings of numbers, according to Nord-Star.
Suarez kept throwing Frisbees and people began listening. It seems that games fill the gaps in trainings installed as a result of language barriers.
Suarez is the proud developer of board games, awarded for his contribution. He is also a very active and popular climate researcher. These two qualities made him understand the beneficial role played by games in this entire equation.
You can make people come to an event, but you can't make them listen unless you find interactive ways of getting their attention.
While working in collaboration with Oxfam America, the researcher succeeded where others had previously failed, in teaching unlettered farmers everything they needed to know about micro-insurance, through an innovative game.
The same method was applied to teach local people from Senegal how to face the effects of a natural disaster, using cards with different messages. Each of them indicated a safety exit measure and participants had to decide which one was more appropriate in a certain context.
Conferences on climate talk in Cancun stuck to the pattern. It appears that climate games highlight the responsibility people have in coming up with the smartest decisions to cope with environmental changes.
Games have an unlimited potential of delivering a message, but the developer has to pay attention to the particularities of the public while brainstorming for a new method. For example, gambling games will never be accepted by members of Muslim communities.
In order to expand on the effects of his newly-found tool, he has been working in collaboration with a team of experienced game designers, aiming to bring the strategy to a whole new level.
“The game represents reality and makes it possible to simulate how different scenarios play out 10-20 years into the future, depending on which decisions the participants make during the game. It’s a concrete way to visualize the different consequences which different decisions will have, and thereby facilitates common ground for decision making,” explained Suarez.