Participatory Modeling (PM): Addressing Water Issues in the Middle Rio Grande and the Effect of PM on Social Learning

On a global scale, humanity is compelled to address wicked resource-related issues in the face of accelerating environmental change. In our work, we use the term wicked problem to refer to an issue that has multiple potential solutions and involves various stakeholders. The paths to reach resource sustainability under environmental uncertainty are difficult to identify, plausible outcomes remain uncertain, and tradeoffs required by any path chosen are challenging to understand. Environmental sustainability issues may involve perspectives from multiple stakeholders (i.e., scientists, policymakers, community members, and industry), often leading to conflicting interests and cultural misalignments that trigger the need for a more integrated approach. Participatory modeling (PM) has been identified as an emerging strategy to address these problems. Participatory modeling aims to generate a shared understanding of the challenges confronting a given resource system through social learning and collaborative thought experiments that explore potential societal responses supported by computational tools. This approach has many examples, but our understanding of how social learning occurs in this context remains limited. In this study, we focus on how people understand and collaborate through PM using freshwater supply models of the Middle Rio Grande River Basin. We conducted online workshops with activities targeting key competencies and collaboration, exposing participants to online scientific data and models. Through these workshops, participants identified conflicts, co-created knowledge, and developed potential solutions informed using scientific models. Results of the study allowed us to determine what mechanisms facilitated social learning and the effectiveness of various tools used to present scientific data and models to non-scientists.