Presentation short abstract

With 76 participants, our multispecies role-playing game on the Rhine generated eco-centric river-restoration scenarios and enabled non-human representation, river commoning practice, social learning. Such RPGs are potential tools for integrating nonhuman perspectives into European water governance.

Presentation long abstract

European water governance frameworks have long treated water as a “resource” or “service,” leaving nonhuman entities largely marginalized within official decision-making processes. Yet riverscapes are socio-ecological networks where human and nonhuman actors co-create and co-transform. Emerging participatory approaches like role-playing games (RPGs) offer experimental spaces for understanding, experimenting nonhuman perspectives and multispecies justice. Consequently, we developed the RPG Speaking as a Proxy for Non-Humans in Defending the Rights of the Rhine, composed exclusively of 9 nonhuman roles representing the Rhine (a highly regulated ecosystem in Europe) basin’s ecological communities. We conducted 5 workshops in Strasbourg with 76 scientists and students, who collectively designed varied Rhine-restoration strategies and governance proposals centering nonhuman needs and interests. Through analysis of the proposed scenarios, teamwork dynamics, and participants’ feedback, we show that RPGs can raise awareness of nonhuman agency, encourage eco-centric proposals, and stimulate ethical, political encounters with the “mother river”, even when the nonhuman representations remain mediated by human knowledge systems. The RPG facilitated context-specific river commoning practices that supported inclusive decision-making processes grounded in interspecies interdependencies and negotiation, echoing both local and global Rights of Nature movements. We also observed social learning outcomes that may inform future civic river stewardship. We argue that integrating RPGs into real-world water governance, e.g., through the institutionalization of interspecies councils, can help move multispecies justice beyond a “utopian desire.” This RPG is part of the French OneWater program and being considered as a creative decision-support tool to incorporate nonhuman perspectives into water policy frameworks in Europe.