SCIENCE 4 (REAL) SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

A game was created by two Physics graduates - Sarah Jones & Emma Tebbs - evolving out of the one originally created in 2007 on the S4S project, but this one uses the real issues of sustainability among the communities of Tugen people who live around Lake Bogoria, Kenya, as a result of a two-week design workshop with community members in August 2008. The game is based upon the ancient African game of Mancala (or Bao in East Africa), which is itself possibly the oldest game in the world, played in pits in the ground. The Sustainability Game is played on a board, with circles representing eight resources instead of pits (e.g. water, livestock, wildlife, wetlands) and seeds representing the amount of resources a player can exploit. The roll of a dice simulates the climate conditions each year under which the players must make decisions about how to allocate their resources and how many to use (eat, drink etc). A film was made about the game at the time of the Workshops.