Challenging beliefs through multi-level participatory modelling in Indonesia

A critical challenge for science in times of increasingly depleted natural resources is how policy and management can be improved to attain a pathway to sustainability. This paper argues that facilitating a learning experience for decision makers by employing participatory modelling and explicitly considering multiple tiers of governance can effectively contribute to achieve sustainable outcomes. Decision makers operate on different scales and respond to decisions made on other scales. However, shared beliefs can vary and policy interventions from different levels can be incompatible due to a lack of cross-sectoral and cross-scale coordination. Sustainability is determined by conditions defined by this process of interactive decision-making, and across various tiers of governance. To improve understanding at one scale in isolation with constant assumptions of the responses at other scales is likely to lead to unsustainable unintended side effects. Based on applied research in Indonesia, consequences for research design, methodological aspects of modelling and the process of decision support are discussed. The agent-based analysis links household livelihoods, deforestation, and fuel price changes. Focused on process-related aspects, this work identifies the effectiveness of participatory modelling to challenge shared beliefs and, therefore, facilitate a potentially valuable learning experience for decision makers. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.