This summer has seen forest fires proliferate across California and Siberia. In the Amazon basin, where conditions are aggravated by climate change, clearance for agriculture is the primary cause. Some five million hectares of forest disappear every year, mainly from Africa and Latin America. Tropical forests, which are particularly badly affected, also store the greatest amount of carbon and have the richest biodiversity. With this in mind, Claude Garcia, a researcher at CIRAD and ETH Zurich, and his international team are calling for a new international policy approach to the fight against deforestation, based on collective intelligence and gaming. With financial support from FFEM, he has developed a game to facilitate negotiations on the management of intact Congo basin forests.
