The Pathways Communication Grant project “Transformation of coffee landscapes: co-production of pathways for sustainability through participatory serious board games » has officially been completed!
As a communication output, the team behind the project developed CAFES (Coffee Agroecosystems Fostering Environmental Sustainability), a serious board game that was used as a tool to generate active reflection by local stakeholders on the challenges faced by the coffee sector.
Its starting point was the research conducted by Carlos Alberto López Arcadia, Martha Bonilla Moheno, and Tlacaelel Rivera Nuñez to evaluate the impact of the coffee-leaf rust outbreak on management practices of coffee producers in central Veracruz, Mexico.
CAFES proved instrumental in fostering conversations on the different responses that coffee producers had to the coffee-leaf rust outbreak. Through different challenges, actors and actions, the game allowed players to imagine desired futures and explore transformative scenarios.
Among such envisioned futures, participants focused on food sovereignty, profitability and entrepreneurship, autonomy, achieving well-being through coffee landscapes, maintaining coffee livelihoods for future generations, and creating partnerships with governments and nonprofits.
The project proved how serious board games can be effective participatory and multi-stakeholder research tools. Produced under a creative common license, this game can be adapted and implemented in many coffee-production contexts around the world.
The project “Transformation of coffee landscapes: co-production of pathways for sustainability through participatory serious board games » was carried out by Pathways Communication Grants awardees:
- Martha Bonilla Moheno, Red de Ambiente y Sustentabilidad, Instituto de Ecología A. C., Mexico
- Carlos Alberto López Arcadia, Red de Ambiente y Sustentabilidad, Instituto de Ecología A. C., Mexico
- Tlacaelel Rivera Nuñez, PhD student in Sustainability Sciences at UNAM, Mexico
Discover more about the project and download a digital version of CAFES with its instructions (available in Spanish and English):
