PLAYING GAMES is helping to engage communities with the complex scientific information used to forecast natural disasters, as well as encouraging people to take steps to mitigate future risks, experts say. Tools ranging from simple probability-based role play scenarios to state-of-the-art digital apps that model the Earth’s changing environment were presented to the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. “What we see is communities engaging with games about disaster risk whereas traditionally the scientific information on the same issues has flowed right off them,” says Maarten van Aalst, the director of the Red Cross’s Climate Centre. “Games are a great way to convey the often complex messages of scientists and can lead to real change,” he adds. In Kenya, for example, communities have played dice games to model probabilities of the El Niño and El Niña cycles that can drive droughts and floods. By assigning rewards and penalties for action or inaction, the games consistently show communities that pursuing preventative measures is a better strategy in the long term than waiting for disasters to hit, says van Aalst. The games have sparked a considerable increase in engagement between communities, scientists and policymakers, and are an invaluable way of starting conversations about disaster management, he adds. But van Aalst admits that the very nature of disaster management — interventions are proved to be successful only in the wake of a disaster — make it difficult to measure the impact of such games. Other efforts to make scientific data fun, such as the Tangible Earth project, use cutting-edge technology. The 3D digital globe, which was released as a free smartphone, provides an intuitive interface for the large amount of disaster-related data — about tropical storms, droughts and crop losses, as well as population and infrastructure changes — in the 2013 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. Manipulating single or multiple variables is not only fun, but makes it easier for people to see how a changing climate could affect them in the future, says David d’Heilly, a researcher for Tangible Earth. “Imagine if instead of telling a farmer that the risk of a disaster is increasing, he could see it with his own eyes,” he adds. The tool also represents a great opportunity for scientists’ work to reach a wider audience among people who work in managing disaster risks, he says. But concerns were raised during the meeting that games must consider factors, such as social structure and gender, if they are to be successful. Van Aalst says adapting games in this way needs skilled facilitators, the training of whom is holding back the scale up games, he adds. Furthermore, he says, encouraging communities to take action to prevent disasters using games is effective only if they have the necessary resources. This would need the donor community to shift its focus from disaster relief to disaster prevention, says van Aalst. (SciDev)
Deforestation threat to hydropower generation
DEFORESTATION MAY lead to electricity shortages in tropical rainforest regions that rely heavily on hydropower, as fewer trees mean less rainfall for hydropower generation, a study shows. For example, if deforestation continues, one of the world’s largest dam projects in Brazil will deliver around a third less energy than is currently estimated, according to the research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Researchers had presumed that cutting down trees near dams increases the flow of water and hence energy production. This is because crops and pastures that replace trees take less water from the ground and lose less moisture by evaporation. But trees also release water vapour into the atmosphere, which turns into rain and feeds hydroelectric power stations, and this new research suggests that wider deforestation can reduce overall rainfall and therefore energy production. This should be taken into account when planning hydropower developments in tropical regions, say the authors. Lead author Claudia Stickler and colleagues looked at the link between trees and power generation at Brazil’s Belo Monte hydropower complex, which is being built on the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon. It is set to be the third largest hydropower project in the world when it is completed in 2015 and is expected to supply 40 per cent of Brazil’s energy needs by 2020. They found that because of current levels of deforestation in the Amazon region, rainfall is already six to seven per cent lower than it would be with full forest cover. “If forest loss doubles by 2050 — that is, if 40 per cent of the Amazon or Xingu river watershed has been deforested by that date — rainfall loss will reduce Belo Monte’s energy production by one third over that projected,” Stickler, a researcher at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute’s International Program in the United States, says. She says that such a degree of deforestation is plausible based on government infrastructure plans in the region. The researchers used computer models simulating land cover, climate and the river system to examine how different deforestation scenarios would affect the regional climate and, ultimately, water flow into the Belo Monte complex. They then calculated the effect on the production of energy. In accordance with previous studies, the researchers found that cutting down trees within the Xingu river basin increased water discharge and energy generation. But this water gain was heavily outweighed by the reduced flow of water caused by less rainfall across the entire Amazon basin. “If deforestation continues to 40 per cent of the total Amazon River basin, even forest conservation or reforestation in the Xingu River basin will not be enough to compensate for the loss,” Stickler says. The study says the amount of rainfall in the Amazon, in Central Africa and in South-East Asia depends on regional forest cover, and that deforestation could affect the hydropower expansion plans of countries in these regions. But Wilson Cabral de Souza Junior, an environmental economist at the Technological Institute of Aeronautics, Brazil, tells SciDev.Net that other regions should use the results with care, as they are based on specific data from the Amazon and Xingu basins. (SciDev)
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