Global Change and the Cross-Cultural Transfer of Policy Games

Studying and managing global change presents new challenges for the scientific and policy-making communities, and they require improved forms of communication at the science-policy interface. This often involves cross-cultural transfer of policy games, strategic simulation exercises, and techniques to address long-term, global problems in their policy context. Over the past 2 years, the author was involved in a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) project looking at the socioeconomic impacts and policy responses resulting from climate change in Southeast Asia, and used the policy exercise (PE) approach to generate local and national scale policy responses to the potential impacts of climate change in Malaysia and Indonesia. The study in general, and the activities related to the PEs in particular, provided valuable insights into the perception of the global problems, attitude towards long-term issues, environmental risk perception, and the management of uncertainties. The second group of lessons is associated with the cross-cultural transfer of a strategic gaming exercise rooted primarily in the North American and European cultures (war games, operational games, structured workshops) to the Southeast Asian cultures. Dramatic cultural differences have been revealed in the preparation phase and at the PE workshops in the formality/informality of procedures, in the styles of debating, criticizing and challenging each other’s ideas, and in the issues related to authority and the hierarchy of people and institutions.