A simulation game to prepare water governance: An experiment in Central TunisiaOriginal Title (non-English) Un jeu de simulation pour preparer une gouvernance de l'eau : une experience en Tunisie centrale [French]

摘要

Until the 2000s, water resources in Tunisia were managed solely by official services without consulting water users. At the local scale, Commissariats Regionaux de Developpement Agricole (CRDA), representing the official services, managed water resources. Then, the Tunisian government decided to involve farmers in the local management of water resources by creating the Agricultural Development Association (GDA). At present, water resource management by the CRDA must take into account water demands from GDA farmer representatives, and farmers must become aware of water scarcity and resource sharing. How can the CRDA and GDA envisage cooperative water management? In this paper we present a simulation game requested by Kairouan CRDA agents for building cooperative management of the water resources in a typical small watershed of Central Tunisia. Our aim was to use this game to increase farmers' awareness of resource sharing, scarcity and overexploitation impacts, as well as CRDA agents' awareness of uses that determine the water demand. This game is based on a hydrological model of the watershed and an agroeconomical model of farming systems that use the water resources for irrigation. A simulation game was played with concerned farmers in the GDA but without CRDA agents because of tensions between the groups. This partial failure shows that participative approaches with game supports rely upon maintaining agent motivation throughout the process.