Consultancy to develop a games-based curriculum for natural resources management and governance

Background

The CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes (MFL) Science Program is part of the CGIAR 2025–2030 Research and Innovation Portfolio. It advances integrated management of food, land, water, and ecosystems across scales. While implementation takes place at plot and farm level, where farmers make daily production decisions, these actions are designed to connect to landscape-level processes, where environmental systems, governance, markets, and social dynamics interact. By linking farm-level practice with landscape transformation, MFL supports coherent, system-wide change.

Games provide opportunities to experience aspects of natural resource and coordination dilemmas without the risks of real-world harm these dilemmas bring. Such games make these dilemmas (and the decisions to be taken) more salient than they may be in their everyday lives or in conventional curricula. Resource governance characteristics including uncertainty, fugitivity, access, nonlinearity, trust and coordination capacity, and response to shock can be experienced; simulated dilemmas can be tackled and solved. Under the framework of the MFL Science Program, IFPRI is seeking an individual consultant to support a capacity sharing vision and partnership to develop, pilot, and facilitate the implementation of a games-based curriculum for natural resources management and governance.

In 2026, the collaborator’s activities include:

• Co-develop a pilot games-based curriculum, based on contrasting natural resource problem domains, that is designed to help participants recognize characteristics of resources and governance problems, and consider how they may relate to their own needs and experiences in the MFL context. Share the draft curriculum with MFL team for feedback and revise the curriculum based on team input.

• Co-design a methodology to evaluate where this curriculum is and is not effective in strengthening conceptual understanding of natural resource governance dilemmas.

• Contribute to the establishment of a Community of Practice (CoP) on game-based learning for natural resources management and governance.

Deliverables for 2026:

1. Games-based curriculum that is ready for pilot in 2027

2. Methodology for impact evaluation

3. Contribution for the setup of a CoP

1.

Required qualifications and skills:

• Advanced degrees or equivalent professional experience in both human and natural systems dimensions of natural resources dilemmas

• At least 10 years’ experience developing serious games or behavioral experiments across a variety of natural resources contexts

• At least 10 years’ experience in curriculum development and teaching in natural resource management or related fields

• Experience designing and implementing impact evaluations and mixed-methods experimental interventions in domains including natural resource management, agricultural development, or other human-environment dilemmas

• Experience developing digital games deployable in field conditions a plus

• Working knowledge and past experience of CGIAR research programs a plus

Duration

August – December 2026

Level of effort

8-15 days

Application Deadline

July 24, 2026

Please include the following with your application:

• Cover letter detailing experience

• Resume or Curriculum Vitae

• Writing sample

• Proposed daily rate