Article
Climate Fresk was created in 2015 by Cedric Ringenbach, a French engineer and professor specialising in energy transition. This board game encourages discussion on environment and climate related issues, especially for young people.
The image of burning forests, featured on a game card on the climate crisis, brought back Dini's childhood memories of being stuck at home for a week while wildfires raged in her hometown in Pontianak, in Indonesia's West Borneo province.
“Wildfires always happen once a year in my hometown, and it's getting worse every year. We must stay at home longer. Not free to breathe,” said Dini, holding up a ‘wildfires’ card during a Jakarta workshop to play Climate Fresk, a collaborative game that teaches climate change and has been played by 1.8 million people in 162 countries.
Twenty-six year-old Dini, who works at a company producing digital maps, says she joined the public workshop, held in Jakarta once a month, for the first time because she was curious about it.
In the lively, three-hour workshop held one Saturday in September at the Senyawa Plus creative space here, participants – among whom were a futsal coach, an international relations student, an environment campaigner – debated how to match the cards showing the consequences of climate change with those showing the causes behind them. Many of the 24 players were involved in environment and climate issues, and non-government organisations.
Mostly aged 19 to 25 and in groups of six to eight persons, the players were freely asking co-players about concepts on the cards that they did not fully understand, although they did not know each other before the game.
The 'wildfires' card was one in a set of 42 cards that are part of the Climate Fresk game. These cards, which show photos and a short description of various impacts of climate change, include those called 'human activities', 'desforestation', 'burning fossil fuels', 'Co2 emissions', 'carbon sinks', 'sea level rise', 'heatwaves', 'armed conflicts' and 'growing inequality' (the latest addition to the card deck).
At the Climate Fresk event, the Indonesian Climate Fresk facilitators divided the game into five sections and distributed groups of cards during each session. The players in each group then discussed the cards that reflect the causes of the climate crisis, with the goal of matching these to the impacts they cause. At the end of the game, all the cards were arranged according to cause and effect.
“The conversation about climate issues is mostly one-way communication," explained Farid Aulia Rahman, a facilitator at the Climate Fresk workshop.
Indeed, as it was among workshop participants, many people know about climate issues in the news and other sources but do not always have ways to ask questions and get familiar with details of the science. But the game context helps break down huge and daunting global issues, while allowing players to localise the topics while staying grounded in the science with the help of trained facilitators.
"This game offers interaction, communication, and networking. People could grasp the problem and feel that it is so close to them,” Farid added.
Climate Fresk, which is played in the first half of the workshop, was created in 2015 by Cedric Ringenbach, a French engineer and professor specialising in the energy transition. He designed the Climate Fresk cards using data from the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body that releases assessments of the climate. ('Fresk' comes from the French word 'fresque', which means fresco, mural, collage, as the cards are laid out at the end of the game.)
The first half of the workshop is taken up by the game, which is followed by discussion and reflection by the participants. Dini, for instance, was sharing her thoughts at this part of the Jakarta workshop.
Interest in the Indonesian workshops have been consistent, Stephanie Rawi, Indonesia coordinator for Climate Fresk. At first, she says, there was a registration fee for participants out of concern that people would not show up without a financial commitment. But these days, the sign-up has been dropped since everyone who registers has tended to show up.
She adds that some participants want to train as facilitators after attending workshops, and efforts are underway to recruit more facilitators for Indonesia.
Apart from the monthly workshops held in Senyawa Plus, located in Central Jakarta, a Climate Fresk workshop is also held every Monday evening at Institut Francais Indonesie, a French cultural centre in Jakarta.
Climate Fresk facilitators do not answer the players' questions or act as arbiters, but are tasked to ask contemplative questions that lead the players find the answers themselves.
Apart from public workshops, which started being held in Indonesia in mid-2023, Climate Fresk is also run for the staffers of private companies such as Decathlon, L’Oreal, Zurich, and government agencies like the ministries of education, culture, research and technology.
“Some international companies are aware of the climate issue. The workshop is part of their employee training. The government uses the workshop as their input to develop public policy,” Stephanie added.
Environmental campaigners say that Climate Fresk works because it popularizes the climate issue, and engages with people to build knowledge at the everyday level.
“Communication is the main problem in delivering climate change issues,” said Rafaela Xaviera, Climate Justice Associate at Yayasan Indonesia Cerah (CERAH), a non-government group focusing on the energy transition policy agenda. “We (campaigners) have difficulties in communicating the close relationship between climate problems and our daily activities," she said.
Games are also an innovative tool for education, given that the curriculum used in Indonesia's educational system does not have much about climate change and its impacts on daily life, Rafaela says.
“The things that I learned from school was we need to plant trees and throw garbage in the bin. But that is just a very simple contribution that we could make. It's not giving the big picture and solving the wider issues,” Rafaela explained.
As part of efforts to bring the climate discussion to more young people, the CERAH team itself produced a game called Emission in 2023. In the game, players in groups of five get to know the impact of carbon emissions – which are produced by human activity and drives global warming – as well the efforts needed to reach zero emissions and how to address climate needs without sacrificing the economy and the environment.
Many Indonesians tend to be more familiar with foreign board games such as Monopoly and Snakes and Ladders, but Rafaela finds climate-focused games to be "an effective approach" in showing the connections among different issues in the climate conversation.
“A game can evoke an emotion,” said Mahawira Dillon, the 42-year-old creator of Emission who is also an environmental campaigner and game enthusiast.
He recalled one game of Emission, where some players got upset after seeing other players' unwholesome actions – in their game decisions – that caused the production of more carbon emissions. “She (the player) was silent before. But when she saw unjust things, these triggered her. I was also surprised (to see that)," he said.
Games cover a lot more ground that formal lectures or discussions, adds Mahawira, who is a communication associate at Global Strategic Communication Council, a network of communication professionals in energy, climate and nature, and is on the experts' panel at Transisi Energi Berkeadilan, a knowledge platform on energy transition in Indonesia.
“People would understand climate issues by playing Emission in one hour rather than listening to six-hour climate seminars. Because when you are acting something out in Emission, there's also an experience in it,” Mahawira said in an interview. For instance, players have to weigh the impact of a decision, such as setting up a coal-fired power plant, that they make during the game.
Mahawira has designed at least four board games around environment and sustainability themes, in collaboration with advocacy groups and projects. These include How Climate Resilient and Inclusive is Your City? and Coralico (on coral sustainability). He is developing another board game around renewable energy.
__
Joan Rumengan is a freelance journalist based in Jakarta, Indonesia.
This article was first published on 30 October 2024 by Reporting ASEAN as part of its Sustainability Series supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung Southeast Asia.
Disclaimer: This published work was prepared with the support of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. The views and analysis contained in the work are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the foundation. The author is responsible for any liability claims against copyright breaches of graphics, photograph, images, audio, and text used.
