Companion modelling to analyse the land/water use and labour migration interactions in Lam Dome Yai watershed, lower Northeast Thailand

Abstract

85% of rice production, the largest type of land use in the northeast region of Thailand, is under rainfed conditions constrained by erratic rainfall distribution and coarse textured soils limiting the regional paddy yield at an average of 1.8 t ha-1 and enabling farmers to have only 6 months in the wet season to carry out rice-growing activities. This harsh agroecosystem and related poor crop productivity leads to very low per capita incomes. A common adaptive strategy for these resource-poor rice farmers is labour migration. However, the interaction between labour migration and changes in land and water use is still not well understood. The future spending of 500,000 million baht on hydro-shield tunnels to divert water from the Mekong River has been planned without prior understanding of this interaction. The purpose of this research is to better understand this interaction by using the Companion Modelling (ComMod) approach to facilitate co-learning between researchers and a heterogeneous group of farmers. ComMod is an iterative, continuous, evolving approach that facilitates dialogue, shared learning, and collective decision-making through interdisciplinary and implicated action-oriented research to strengthen the adaptive management capacity of stakeholders facing a common resource management problem. In this case study, ComMod is used to enhance co-learning through knowledge exchange to integrate indigenous and academic knowledge, aimed at building a shared representation of the interaction under study. Importantly, such a shared representation allows stakeholders to efficiently explore possible scenarios of change in the future and to agree upon suitable collective actions. In this implementation of the ComMod process, associated tools i.e., a Role-Playing Game (RPG) and an Agent-Based Model (ABM) were developed with local rice farmers of Ban Mak Mai village, Det Udom district, Ubon Ratchathani province. According to the participating farmers, the co-designed ABM, named “BanMakMai”, sufficiently represents their farm management and labour migration practices. Subsequent monitoring and evaluation activities found various effects of ComMod on participating farmers regarding knowledge acquisition and changes in perceptions of the system under study, decision-making, and practices. The farmers also said that such a co-learning process, facilitated and stimulated by the evolutionary gaming and simulation exercises, is a very effective means for knowledge exchange.