Sustainability Research + Innovation Inkundla Congress 2022 took place online on April 21. As part of the event, we had the pleasure to lead the session “Cascading Climate Impacts across Geographical Boundaries” during which Piotr Magnuszewski and Michalina Kułakowska presented the topic of potential future food crisis by means of our new social simulation. The session was open to all the registered participants and offered an opportunity to explore the real-world stories and scientific research behind the simulated events.

After a short introduction participants immersed in the interactive simulation world haunted by cascading climate impacts. Each participant chose one of the roles, which included e.g. a representative of the Indian Organic Trade and Farmers Association or the Canada-Brazil Research Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, etc. Divided into five working groups, they were working on one of the specific topics: 1) free trade, 2) agrochemical production and trade, 3) feeding the planet, 4) building resilience to food crises and 5) impacts of food production on biodiversity. To each challenge possible mitigation policies were proposed, which were being discussed by participants gathered on Zoom and the simulation platform. The players could also create their own policies if the existing ones were found unsatisfactory. Additionally, they could also undertake efforts to convince other participants to support them.

After discussion participants were invited to the plenary room for the follow-up debriefing session, during which they could share their opinions and comments both on the tool and the whole experience.

The Cascading Climate Impacts Policy Simulation was created as part of the “CASCADES – Cascading climate risks: Towards adaptive and resilient European Societies” project, which was funded through the EU Horizon 2020 programme.