Paper short abstract:

With the purpose of assessing how small-scale agricultural water users perceive benefit-sharing mechanisms and learn how to effectively cooperate, so that all users benefit without anyone being disadvantaged, an experimental game (the ‘Basin game’) was developed and tested in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

Paper long abstract:

Common-use resources such as water bodies provide essential ecosystem services for farming communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, their security is often threatened due to their non-exclusion and rivalry features. An experimental game was developed to simulate farming choices and consequences for shared water resources. This methodology served to test if individuals, when having free access to the resource, make decisions foreseen by Nash equilibrium for non-cooperative games, and if specific management strategies can influence decisions to reach socially optimum outcomes. Throughout the game, implemented in four communities in Ghana and Burkina Faso, the players gained a good understanding of the system dynamics within a particular basin and were able to profess solutions to such dynamics. Players realised that their income depends not only on their own decisions but on those of others; this realisation came earlier in the game when a properly drafted external regulation was introduced to promote cooperation. Local water users understood that they have the key to managing water rather than relying on external agents for solutions, showing the Basin game could be used as a tool to promote community water registers and rules to govern water use. Because water security around small dams is affected by many factors, games alone will not end water shortages or pollution, but can contribute to understand the role of agricultural choices and collective action and motivate behaviour change towards more sustainable water management.