An Innovative decision-making tool to enhance the role of water as a source of peace and cooperation.
The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies will be hosting an online Climate & Security game on Wednesday March 22 from 15.00 – 17.00 CET/9.00 – 11.00 EST.
Participants will take part in a moderated serious game focused on the case study of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. This serious gaming exercise fulfills two purposes:
- creating awareness and understanding of the complexities behind conflict-sensitive water management decision making in climate-vulnerable areas; and
- stimulating the development of innovative ideas that could support conflict sensitive water management strategies in the Sinai.
In the Sinai Peninsula, wide-spread land degradation, biodiversity loss and soil erosion put pressure on the availability of freshwater resources, which poses a direct risk to human livelihoods—especially those of vulnerable communities. Their relatively low adaptive and coping capacity to mitigate these risks also make them more susceptible to the emergence of conflict. This requires multi-disciplinary, cross-level, security-proof collaboration amongst indigenous communities, governments, industries, financial institutions and academics.
Our serious game simulates a situation whereby participants are the decision makers tasked with the challenge of increasing the adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities in the Sinai Peninsula and mitigating the impact of climate-induced water scarcity. This complex task implies the definition of a desired end state and objectives, determining actors involved and possibly affected by the situation and possible measures, and the discussion of pre-defined possibilities to address the situation of water scarcity from political, socio-economic, legal and data-informational perspectives. The game will be played for approximately 2-2.5 hours, based on three stages:
(1) Defining objectives;
(2) Determining relevant actors to be considered and/or involved;
(3) Choosing capabilities that could contribute to the objectives.
This side event contributes to the thematic areas ‘Water for Sustainable Development’ and ‘Water for Climate, Resilience and Environment’ of the UN 2023 Water Conference.
The Zoom link will be send to all registrants a few days prior to the event.
