Imagine a landscape covered by rubber agroforests and patches of forests and paddy field. The majority of inhabitants are farmers producing latex from rubber agroforests. They also make living by planting rice or collecting timber and fruits from the nearby remaining natural forest.

Lately, pressure to convert rubber agroforests to monoculture plantation is increasing. A palm oil company agent promises benefits. A logging company for pulp wood and paper also wants to log forest for an attractive price.

Meanwhile, a ‘save the tiger’ organization offers rewards to villagers for protecting forest cover. Intact forest must be maintained at all times within the landscape to prevent extinction of the tiger. A watershed protection board also offers some rewards for intact forest. The target is that all villages in the valley make a clear commitment to protect the water resource. A rubber company representative looking for a sustainable rubber production is willing to support the community with rubber agroforest farms where they have watershed protection program and supports tiger conservation efforts.

If you are one of the villagers, can you imagine what you would do? How farmers decide what they would do amid the offers and pressures?

“The real situation may be more complex, but we can use a game to dig information and understand how the villagers decide,” said Grace Villamor, a PhD student from Bonn University, Germany, studying how rubber agroforestry farmers in Bungo, a RUPES research site in Jambi – Indonesia, make decisions about their landscape.

To understand the land use and land cover changes in her research site, Grace applied Land Use Dynamics Game developed and first introduced by RUPES Program during its Inception Workshop in Bangkok, Thailand back in 2003.

The game has been further developed to meet more specific objectives. During the RUPES Global Event in Lombok in early 2007, participants used the game to learn environmental service reward negotiations in a landscape involving various land use change agents i.e. farmers, the watershed protection board, a wildlife protection organization, and a logging company.

For her research in Bungo, Grace modified the game to also introduce the concept of eco-certification and REDD as rewards for environmental services.

“One of the interesting facts I found in Bungo is that the non-economic motivations such as the strong conservation belief system of the villagers was so evident in the negotiation process,” said Grace now planning using the game to other neighboring villages hoping to come up with some general explanation on how villagers in Bungo District make decision in relation to land use dynamics.