Abstract:

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our era. Rising temperatures and sea levels, changes in rainfall patterns and water temperatures, ocean acidification and more frequent and intense extreme weather events, will all affect how and where we produce our food. It is important to understand that on one hand, the food system is affected by climate change in all its dimensions: access, availability, utilization and stability; and, on the other hand, the global food system is also a major source of GHG emissions, emitting ~31% of the global total. Educating college students on the connections between food system and climate change is essential both to their careers development and to society’s ability to propose alternatives for facing climate change.

A role-playing game is used to explain the consequences of climate change on the global food system at several levels. The participants will have to assume the role of different stakeholders in order to, through a negotiation process, achieve a certain objective related with sustainability and different international Agendas as the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda. The stakeholders belong to different elements of the food chain like farmers, food industry, food markets and consumers. They will suffer the effects of climate change and, at the same time, will produce direct and indirect effects on CO2 emissions. They will seek to prevent and minimize damage due to the effects of climate change, while trying to increase their production and achieve the common goal “reduce emissions”.

This activity involves students in a role-play simulation game. The aim of this activity is to contribute to the teaching and learning process on the interaction of climate change and food system, approaching the subject from a playful and practical perspective, where students must learn to behave, reflect and make decisions, exposing them to real challenges that they must live through. We chose a role-playing game because we argue that it can stimulate learning by bringing abstract conceptions alive for students, help them to see others points of view and the differences between concepts and reality, provide another environment in the classroom, and provide useful information to the professor/educator.

This article presents role-play’s objective, the rules of the game, and the different roles that students can choose. It explains the prediction of GHG emissions based on the data from the game, and evaluates the results of its first and second simulation. The two role-play activities were played on UPM master classes related to the proposed theme, specifically the Master's Degree in Agricultural Engineering and the Master in Strategies and Technologies for Development. The results show the effectiveness of role-play simulation for learning purposes. We completed two evaluations, before and after the role-play and we concluded that this activity made classes more interactive and proactive, helped in the learning and reflective process promoting participation and enhancing collaborative capacity to solve complex problems. In fact, we suggest that this kind of activities should be more widely embraced as part of education and engagement tools, especially at college level to tackle complex issues as climate change and food systems interactions.

Keywords:

Climate Change, Food Systems, Sustainability, Role-play, Problem-Based learning.