The Naturalist’s Challenge:

Abstract

How might an interactive web experience educate participants to climate change solutions related to food, agriculture, and land use while instilling them with a level of personal agency to make a difference? The Naturalist’s Challenge, an online game application, educates participants to sustainable habits related to diet and consumption while giving structure to enable successful integration of new habits into the player’s everyday life. It leverages the innate sociability of games to create a community that expands the positive environmental impact and spreads through social networking to help combat the climate crisis. Unlike others of its kind, The Naturalist’s Challenge, directly approaches issues within our global food system to educate users about things that can be done at an individual level to help reverse global warming. A key aspect of the project is that it aims to inspire, create agency, and bring hope. Its key precedents are carbon tracking apps, behavioral modification apps, and cooperative simulation games. Climate change is an ever-impending issue that our world is in the midst of grappling with. The International Panel on Climate Change, who documents the progress of global warming, just released a report that we have entered into ‘Code Red for Humanity’. However, when talking about climate change, many people feel hopeless that any individual action can make a difference. The good news is that things can still change and understanding the options is the first step. The food, agriculture, and land use sector contributes a whopping 24% of all greenhouse gas emissions. This is an area where individuals can make the most difference. The Naturalist’s Challenge targets this sector and related consumer habits and combines it with the theories of learning through play and behavior modification through gamification to create an engaging, educational structure for individual and community change.