Guy Trébuil

Companion Modeling, Conflict Resolution, and Institution Building: Sharing Irrigation Water in the Lingmuteychu Watershed, Bhutan

We used multi-agent systems (MAS), following the companion modeling method, to facilitate water management negotiations in Bhutan. We show how this methodology helped resolve a conflict over the sharing of water resources by establishing a concrete agreement and creating an institution for collective watershed management. The conceptual model begins with a role-playing game (RPG). The stakeholders play the game, thus validating the proposed environment, the behavioral rules, and the emergent properties of the game. It is then relatively easy to translate the RPG into computerized MAS that allow different scenarios to be explored. After this first step in the MAS model, stakeholders then create an institution. A second model is developed to facilitate this process. We conclude by discussing the relationship between the models and reality, as well as the use of MAS as a mediation tool and the social process. (Resume dauteur)

An evolving simulation/gaming process to facilitate adaptive watershed management in northern mountainous Thailand

The decentralization of natural resource management provides an opportunity for communities to increase their participation in related decision making. Research should propose adapted methodologies enabling the numerous stakeholders of these complex socioecological settings to define their problems and identify agreed-on solutions. This article presents a companion modeling (ComMod) experiment combining role-playing games and multiagent systems conducted in a community in northern Thailand to support collective learning for adaptive land management. Researchers and local stakeholders collectively built a representation of the situation and used it as a platform to explore scenarios. This ComMod process initially addressed a soil erosion problem. The participants identified the expansion of perennial crops as a promising solution but also raised the problem of the unequal ability among villagers to invest in such crops. The researchers flexibly adapted the simulation tools to the emerging matter. The authors assess the learning effects of this experiment and identify two favoring factors: the increasing participation of local stakeholders and a flexible and adaptive modeling process suited to learning, which by nature is an evolving process. But to ensure sustainable impacts for the communities, stronger links with higher institutional levels are needed.

Using Multi-Agent Systems in a Companion Modelling Approach for Agroecosystem Management in South-East Asia

This paper describes research using multi-agent systems as a companion modelling tool to address key issues related to agroecosystem management in northern Thailand and northern Vietnam. The authors illustrate an approach for the use of complex models for the accompaniment of adaptive management experiences. First, some considerations on the shifts of paradigm that underlie the research are discussed. Then two case studies are presented. The first one illustrates the iterative process of problem solving with local stakeholders, while the second emphasizes the emergence of local institutions in the context of land reforms. In both cases, the research started with an analysis of the agrarian system, which integrated multiscale biophysical and socioeconomic knowledge by means of a model. The research process then evolved towards the use of such models in participatory approaches for community-based natural resource management. Regular interactions between researchers and local stakeholders mediated by the companion modelling tools were helpful in progressing local development.

Spatial representations are not neutral: Lessons from a participatory agent-based modelling process in a land-use conflict

The objective of this paper is to question the increasingly common choice to build and use spatially explicit models, especially in the case of participatory agent-based modelling processes. The paper draws on a combination of lessons from literature and the case of a companion modelling process conducted in the context of a conflict about land and forest management in Northern Thailand. Using insights from negotiation theories, we analyze specifically the influence of spatial representations on the way people interacted, discussed and learnt from each other in the participatory modelling process. We argue that models that are spatially too explicit and realistic can actually impede the exploration of innovative and integrative scenarios in which ecological, social and economic objectives are mutually enriching. Indeed, spatial representations might lead to think in terms of boundaries and segregated space, and therefore prevent from thinking in terms of multifunctional space and from finding innovative and integrative solutions.

A systems approach to understanding obstacles to effective implementation of IPM in Thailand: key issues for the cotton industry

A comprehensive study of the history of cotton production in Thailand shows the causes of its collapse. Crop protection problems are regarded as major driving forces behind the recent changes in cotton production systems. The cotton industry went through the characteristic sequence leading from subsistence farming to a disaster phase, because of increasing reliance on chemical pesticides. Integration of biophysical and socio-economic aspects of cotton production allows for this evolutionary path and the obstacles to the dissemination of IPM principles among key stakeholders to be explained. Suggestions are made to facilitate the process of collective learning toward more sustainable IPM practices.

Systems diagnoses at field, farm and watershed levels in diversifying upland agroecosystems: towards comprehensive solutions to farmers’ problems

In mainland Southeast Asia, the increasing population pressure on montane agroecosystems, their growing integration into the market economies and the impact of national environmental protection policies are provoking rapid transformations in highland farmers’ strategies and practices evolving from slash and burn to more intensive, diverse production systems. In such a context, most of the attempts at transferring standard recommended technologies are facing very low rates of adoption. These variable and heterogeneous environments provide opportunities for using holistic systems approaches to address the whole complexity of agricultural development issues. To boost the prospects of significant impact, however, the farmer must be put at the centre of a development-oriented research process. Diagnostic tools at field, farm and watershed levels are used to understand the rapidly increasing diversity of farmers’ circumstances, the rationale of farmers’ practices and strategies, and key dynamics at work. Such information must be integrated in the research agenda to design improved production systems preserving the resource base while increasing land and labour productivity. At farmers’ field level, we use the on-farm agronomic experiment-survey procedure to inventory farmers’ techniques, explain their practices and assess their impact on crop function and its environment. In actual farmers’ conditions, limiting factors of yields are ranked, yield modelling is carried out, and hypotheses for new cropping systems are derived. At the farming system level, the diversity of farmers’ objectives and strategies is analysed and their functioning summarized diagrammatically. Similar fanning systems are grouped into a typology and trajectories of evolution displaying the process of accumulation/elimination on the farms along various pathways. Based on results obtained at the two previous scales, the analysis of land-use dynamics at the watershed level spatially distributes the diversity of situations and the extent of dominating trends, and points to the conflict areas. Risky practices regarding land degradation are mapped and the potential impact of improved cropping systems can also be generated at this scale. Illustrations from a case study of diversifying upland rice-based fanning systems in montane upper northern Thailand are provided to demonstrate how these on-farm research tools can be articulated into an integrated systems research approach producing fine-tuned and well-targeted innovations. Their role in helping the needed institutional change in these less-favoured ecosystems is also underlined.

Assessment and Monitoring of the Effects of the ComMod Approach

The assessment of the effects of companion modelling is currently still a theoretical and methodological field under investigation. However, neighbouring fields of research provide relevant elements of reflection. For example, research on integrated assessments aims to provide public policy decision-makers with relevant information for decision-making.

Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation Applied to Environmental Management

The purpose of this chapter is to summarize how agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) is being used in the area of environmental management. With the science of complex systems now being widely recognized as an appropriate one to tackle the main issues of ecological management, ABMS is emerging as one of the most promising approaches. To avoid any confusion and disbelief about the actual usefulness of ABMS, the objectives of the modelling process have to be unambiguously made explicit. It is still quite common to consider ABMS as mostly useful to deliver recommendations to a lone decision-maker, yet a variety of different purposes have progressively emerged, from gaining understanding through raising awareness, facilitating communication, promoting coordination or mitigating conflicts. Whatever the goal, the description of an agent-based model remains challenging. Some standard protocols have been recently proposed, but still a comprehensive description requires a lot of space, often too much for the maximum length of a paper authorized by a scientific journal. To account for the diversity and the swelling of ABMS in the field of ecological management, a review of recent publications based on a lightened descriptive framework is proposed. The objective of the descriptions is not to allow the replication of the models but rather to characterize the types of spatial representation, the properties of the agents and the features of the scenarios that have been explored and also to mention which simulation platforms were used to implement them (if any). This chapter concludes with a discussion of recurrent questions and stimulating challenges currently faced by ABMS for environmental management.

Learning About Interdependencies and Dynamics

As mentioned in previous chapters, the companion modelling approach is based on principles laid down in the ComMod Charter (Collectif ComMod 2005). In this founding document, two fields of application were identified: to produce knowledge on the social and ecological systems under study and to facilitate cooperation between different stakeholders involved in a participatory process.

Methodological integration for sustainable natural resource management beyond field/farm level: lessons from the ecoregional initiative for the humid and sub-humid tropics of Asia

SUMMARY Integrated natural resources management (INRM) has to address both the livelihood goals of farmers and the ecological sustainability of agroecosystems and natural resources. Under the Ecoregional Initiative for the Humid and Sub-Humid Tropics of Asia — Ecor(1)Asia — one major set of activities has been the development of approaches, methodologies, and tools to meet the challenges of INRM research for sustainable agricultural development. Examples provided illustrate the role of these methodologies in the three main phases of knowledge development for improving INRM impact: knowledge generation, knowledge capitalization, and knowledge mobilization. The methodologies are designed for better integration across disciplines, spatial scales, and hierarchical levels of social organization. Attempts are made to quantify trade-offs between biophysical sustainability and socio-economic considerations. The case is made for using these methodologies in a more complementary manner to help bridge the topdown and bottom-up approaches in INRM. Inherent in the developing and implementing of these methodologies is the forging of partnerships and fostering linkages with multiple stakeholders, as well as using the knowledge base and integrative tools as communication platforms.