28. august 2025 news
Climate change can be daunting and cause issues not only for nature and wildlife but also make us argue over access rights to resources, laws and regulations. One such case is when countries start to argue over fish stocks "on the move". These are stocks that, due to climate change or other reasons, have moved into another country's waters. Such cases bring up a whole range of questions, like who owns this fish stock? Can we, who have always fished from this stock be allowed to fish it even if it is no longer in our waters? Or now that the fish has newly arrived in our waters, can we fish it, even if we do not have an official catch quota? Hence, the issue of distributing and dividing quotas from the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) set for a stock becomes of particular importance. This is especially the case if we want to avoid overfishing, say no thank you to the tragedy of the commons, but hello to sustainable resource management!
So how can we address these complex challenges? How can we make different parties agree to a quota arrangement that everyone can accept and be happy with? The answer is not always easy, and we may not have a perfect solution that applies to all. But while we still figure things out in real life, could we take a safe approach and have a little fun while discussing it? For sure! And that is why we developed the serious game called FishPoll. The FishPoll game allows you to play out fishing quota negotiations for a stock that is moving under climate change. The game is not only fun, but it is also a safe space to explore different negotiation behaviours, learn from the insights and perspectives of the other players, and experience first-hand what the consequences of your decisions may look like – without any real-life impact.
So why wait - check out this paper fresh off the virtual press, print out the playing materials, and get your game on! Play a round of FishPoll and see if you can find innovative ways on how we can share quotas while keeping stocks sustainably fished under climate change! Or take the game to your stakeholders, students or colleagues and let them take on this playful negotiation challenge! We may even learn something useful, for the real-word.
