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Abstract

A growing portion of scientists realized the need to not only alert about climate change, but also change their professional practices. This study presents a new game-based transition support system called "Ma Terre en 180 Minutes" (https://materre.osug.fr/), which is, to our knowledge, the first tool developed by and for the academic community. It has been designed to educate about planetary boundaries, and carbon footprint more specifically, and then to build scenarios of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions reduction in the academic community. After the awareness phase 1 that aims to build a common scientific background, the participants immerse themselves into fictional characters during the role-playing phase 2 to simulate the behavior of real research groups. Two phases are separated by few days helping participants to embody their fictional characters and having time to perform their personal carbon footprint. Finally, an important debriefing phase 3 takes place to discuss and analyze previous phases. Results show clear pathways for GHG reductions between 25 and 60%, and a median reduction of 46%. The alternatives allowing the largest reduction are video communication tools (36%), followed by mutualization of professional activities and voluntary cancellation that represents 22 and 14% of reduction, respectively. The remaining 28% is composed by the use of train, the relocation of professional activities, the duration extension of some missions. Futhermore, the analyses pointed out the importance of guided negotiations to bring out some alternatives. Finally, results include broader questions on how network structures influence “climate behavior”, and the governance of the commons.