What Macron would do differently if he could go back in time

It’s May 2017. We see an elated Emmanuel Macron, celebrating his presidential victory, his platform focused on making the government more efficient and including green initiatives aimed at helping France reduce its dependency on nuclear and fossil fuels. In his acceptance speech, he says he understands the “rage, anxiety and doubt” simmering in the country and that he plans to use his five years healing the divisions.

The future starts now:

experiencing scenarios for energy transition through a social simulation

In many countries worldwide, the topic of energy transition seems to be highly charged. The array of challenges connected to this process embraces a clash of worldviews, controversies over the efficiency of existing technologies, legitimacy and quality of planned and implemented policies, disputes over the “right” energy mix as well as other complex economic and social issues.

The World’s Future is in our hands

How can we use the social simulation to address the biggest problem facing us today?

In The World’s Future, participants become country leaders and collaboratively steer the fictional world from now till around 2030. As players make virtual decisions on their country’s energy mix, R&D expenditures, environmental policy, and socio-economic growth, they get a very realistic feel of what may happen if we don’t take climate change seriously.

Learn how social simulations navigate through complexity

The purpose of social simulation is to trigger change. This change may affect attitudes, standpoints, our understanding of a given issue or – most desirably – the way we behave or act. Social simulation is supposed to make the process of positive change possible. To accomplish it, the participants of social simulations recreate a real life situation.

Understanding the nexus approach

The nexus approach can guide a transition to sustainability, by reducing negative impacts within the system and producing gains that outweigh the costs connected with investing in better policy and “greener” technology. Based on a better understanding of the interdependence of water, energy and food, this integrated approach identifies multilateral beneficial solutions to resource management (e.g. water and waste recycling, investing in green infrastructure or renewable sources of energy) and provide way to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The Alpbach story:

Centre for Systems Solutions’ simulations in the village of thinkers

Since 2014, the multinational and multicultural participants of the European Forum Alpbach have been engaged in our social simulations, playing, i.a., Forest@Risk, Bengaluru Quest or The World’s Future through which they explored the difficult task of making decisions under certainty, managing common pool resources, addressing social and environmental problems and transforming towards sustainability.

Bengaluru Quest in Alpbach:

How to trigger reflection and inspire to action in an hour

The Bengaluru Quest is an environment for exploring behavioral, social and institutional challenges connected with sustainability transformation. By painful yet thought-provoking confrontation with a real-world case, participants may face a complex, ambiguous, and uncertain reality of modern policy making. The interactive and dynamic character of this process can lead to a deeper understanding and insights of a universal relevance.