ScienceDirect - Environmental Modelling & Software : Challenging beliefs through multi-level participatory modelling in Indonesia

ScienceDirect - Environmental Modelling & Software : Challenging beliefs through multi-level participatory modelling in Indonesia

A critical challenge for science in times of increasingly depleted natural resources is how policy and management can be improved to attain a pathway to sustainability. This paper argues that facilitating a learning experience for decision makers by employing participatory modelling and explicitly considering multiple tiers of governance can effectively contribute to achieve sustainable outcomes. Decision makers operate on different scales and respond to decisions made on other scales. However, shared beliefs can vary and policy interventions from different levels can be incompatible due to a lack of cross-sectoral and cross-scale coordination. Sustainability is determined by conditions defined by this process of interactive decision-making, and across various tiers of governance.