Wearing Borneo’s farmers shoes through role-playing game

by Nur Hasanah, Fidel Chiriboga-Arroyo and Nicole Ponta
Participants listening to game master`s introductions (photo credit: Nur Hasanah- Ecosystem Management Group/ETH Zurich)
Despite the merciless summer sun calling for swims in the river and walks in shady forests, eight people engaged in a lively discussion on ETH Zurich`s Polyterrasse with seemingly no end in sight. After nearly 3 hours, the discussion was still in full swing. “We are going to starve!” said one of the players and “The company just wants our land!” said another. Curious people stopped by and followed a few of the confusing minutes before they realized that what was happening was part of a role-play game. Participants were acting as smallholder farmers trying to make the best out of their land while negotiating contracts with the neighboring oil palm company that dominates the landscape - a board made of 22 tiles representing forests, plantations, and communities. At 5:30 p.m., the game master, doctoral student, Nicole Ponta, finally decided to close the action and start the debriefing.

“So, now you have experienced first-hand how the oil palm system works in Indonesia. We can stop the game and reflect upon what happened during the past few hours and why it happened,” she said to the players.
The Indonesian Ambassador in Switzerland (wearing the white suit), participated as one of the villagers during the game session. (photo credit: Nur Hasanah-Ecosystem management Group/ETH Zurich)
The oil palm game, designed by the doctoral researcher Nur Hasanah under the ETH Zurich-led project on Oil Palm Adaptive Landscape (OPAL), was one of four games played during the public event sessions during the recent Latsis Symposium on Scaling up Forest Restoration. Professor Jaboury Ghazoul and the Ecosystem Management Group at ETH Zurich organized the symposium held between the June 6 - 9th, 2018. The aim of the game was to improve the management of oil palm landscapes in Indonesia through an understanding of current farmers’ strategies and exploring alternative trajectories.

At the Latsis Symposium public event, the team encouraged participants to get into the role of a farmer in Indonesia and face the challenge of managing their land and forest, while sustaining their families and being tempted to work with palm oil – a very profitable option for them.
The palm oil business has indeed become one of the principal commodities for thousands of inhabitants in rural areas of East Kalimantan, Borneo. The adoption of palm oil, of course, is not without landscape-scale consequences. Consequences that can be observed, analyzed, and discussed within a game setting.

Among the participants, ETH had the privilege of hosting the Indonesian Ambassador in Switzerland, Professor Mualiaman D. Hadad and his colleague Mr. Am Sidqi, who we invited to join the event in order to find out more about our work in Indonesia.

Negotiation and Collaboration

On the Polyterrasse, players negotiated with each other saying things like, “I wanted to plant oil palm, but you did not want it.” We observed their debate and eventual agreement on decisions. Meanwhile, players from the Indonesian Embassy, who sat next to the company (acted by Fidel Chiriboga-Arroyo), negotiated a special agreement with the company itself that focused on the positive benefits of oil-palm planting. By the end of the game, one village farmer seemed to be the most successful in terms of acquired revenue. He had not only paid his household expenses on time, but also managed to accumulate a significant savings for periods of drought.
Playing with villagers in Borneo, Indonesia. (photo credit: Nur Hasanah, Ecosystem Management group/ETH Zurich)

Powerlessness and Uncertainty

At the beginning of the game, a player was randomly assigned the role of Village Head. Her responsibilities included caring for the sustainability of her fellow villagers and their practices. However, villagers, in most cases, did not follow the village leader’s recommendations and often took decisions without her consultation. “I tried several times to talk with the villagers, but everyone was busy trying to fulfill their needs before the time-limited rounds finished,” she said during the debriefing.

Another participant said, “We needed to think about how not to starve.” They feared ending up like their neighbor, whose harvest failed as an unexpected drought occurred. The environmental and economic uncertainty pushed villagers to plan their strategies carefully in order to fulfill their targets at the end of each round.
A game session with local government in Borneo, Indonesia. (photo credit: Halimatu, OPAL- ETH Zurich&CIFOR)
Uncertainty in Indonesia is prevalent and it reveals itself in different forms such as floods, droughts, and the market price fluctuation of oil palm. These unexpected events result in income loss for local people who are not prepared to cope. Traditionally, villagers in Kalimantan were mostly rice producers and fishermen, but things are changing.
We have always planted rice, but lately the weather is very dry, and pest pressure causes the paddy harvest to fail, so we plant palm oil
– 59-year-old farmer in Kalimantan
Whether it is planting rice, fishing or cultivating oil palm plantations, all decisions taken by farmers entails risk – both in the game, as well as, in real life. The results of the 12-game sessions played by actual villagers in Kalimantan demonstrated to us that diversifying strategies resulted in the best way to cope with uncertainty and sustain their livelihood.
We went fishing, so we do not need to buy, and it will reduce our living cost
– 35-year-old oil palm smallholder
“One laborer allocated to my oil palm plantation - one to the river and another to plant in the paddy. This strategy made me pretty financial stable, so there was no need to change,” said a 38-year-old oil palm smallholder. The diverse livelihoods reflected most real life villagers, where their family members usually allocate time and energy to farming, fishing, as well as other businesses such as restaurants or travel agents.

The Player Here and There

In the meantime, back on ETH Zurich’s Polyterrasse, the Indonesian rainforest thrived while villagers sustainably extracted resources such as wood and wild meat. At the end of the game, most of the tiles were still dark green, the color of a healthy, mature forest. Each player converted only a small section of his or her land to palm oil plantation. This result was in strike contrast to what has actually happened in Kalimantan, where the average oil palm plantation represented 10 out of 22 tiles at the end of the game. The villagers thought palm oil plantations were less of a risk for natural hazards such as drought and floods.

At ETH Zurich, the fictional villagers were much more willing to negotiate with the palm oil company and to work for them in their plantation. Kalimantan farmers were more reluctant and, although some collaboration did occur, they ultimately preferred to develop their own plantations. Some of them said that they felt it was enough living without the need of the collaboration, while others did not trust the company and preferred to maintain their lands, instead of becoming an oil palm worker.
Players and organizers (photo credit: Fanny-Ecosystem Management Group/ETH Zurich)
Overall, players at ETH were able to gain first-hand insight into the socio-ecological system of oil palm in Indonesia and experience the challenges that the local farmers face in their everyday lives. “I knew that their lives were hard, but now I can feel the frustration of not having a choice,” said one of the players. While the local farmers expressed that, they were not aware of how their decisions would affect their neighbors and the strategies that would be possible to maximize their lands. In addition, the head of villages and local government (or Plantation Agency) in Kalimantan, with whom we ran a session, said that the game was useful for discovering the issues on the ground and potential policy considerations. Notably, the game play suggested a better scheme for partnerships that alleviates the tension on the parthership mechanism between companies and villagers in real life.
Whether on the field in Indonesia or at ETH in Zurich, games are simple yet powerful tools that can bring people with different perceptions together. We share common values and agendas. It’s about understanding each others’ point of view, sharing knowledge, as well as critically AND creatively discussing the way forward.

About the authors

Nur Hasanah is a PhD student in the Ecosystem Management group ETH Zurich and funded by Swiss Federal Excellence Scholarship. Within the framework of the Oil Palm Adaptive Landscape project (OPAL), her PhD thesis explores the link between Ecosystem Services and oil palm development through local perceptions in Borneo Indonesia. She uses various methods, such as interviews, Focus Group Discussions, and Role Playing Games. She designed an oil palm game at ETH Zurich which has been tested by collegues both at ETH and the Center International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Indonesia office before she introduced it to rural areas in Borneo and played 12 sessions with villagers as well as 3 game sessions with the local government, head of villages, NGOs, and oil palm companies in the area.
Gaming the Palm Oil Industry
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Fidel Chiriboga-Arroyo is an Ecuadorian PhD student in the Ecosystem Management Group and working with conservation genetics & applied molecular ecology. He is currently focusing on studies of reproductive patterns and forest-enrichment practices of Brazil nut populations in the Peruvian Amazon and deeply collaborating with the so-called SUSTAIN project, which assesses ecological and socioeconomic aspects of a sustainable Brazil-nut value chain from Peru to Swiss consumers.
Sustain Forest
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Nicole Ponta is a PhD student in the Forest Management and Development group working on community-based wildlife management in the Colombian Amazon. In her research, she investigates the decision-making process of indigenous hunters in order to explore the best management strategies that benefit both wildlife and the people that depends on it for their subsistence. She does this with a variety of participatory tools that include role-playing games.
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