Landscapes online Playing to master the economic and environmental tradeoffs of land-use investments

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A plot of forested land. Log it? Preserve it for carbon credits? Plant oil palm? Build a tourist eco-lodge?

The Landscape Game, the brainchild of CIFOR scientist Herry Purnomo, is currently out of stock. Over 1000 games have been sold to universities, NGOs and teaching centers around the world. The game mirrors reality in that to maximize wealth, players race to invest in land while negotiating competing interests, profits and costs to the environment.

The game is now really set to make an impact with an online version launched in December 2014 and an app on its way. Already, government officials in the US and Argentina have shown interest in using and adapting the game for public education and land management decision making, and the download numbers are growing.

In the three months since launch:

  • 1806 downloads of the Android version
  • across more than 10 different countries.

One billion people have played Monopoly, but Monopoly actually doesn’t teach you anything about sustainability.

Herry Purnomo
CIFOR scientist