Companion modelling to support collective land management in the highlands of Northern Thailand

Following a presentation of the local context, the problem, and the original characteristics of the ComMod approach, this article describes its concrete use with Akha villagers. The article explains how a shared representation of the watershed and its dynamics is achieved, and the way it supports collective learning on land management. The flexibility and adaptive characteristics of the gaming and simulation tools used with the people are highlighted as they fit with the evolving nature of coordination processes in adaptive NRM. How the focus of discussions evolved from agro-ecological to socio-economic dynamics related to soil erosion issue is also explained. Finally, preliminary lessons from this ComMod experiment are presented, as well as new perspectives for improving this approach. (Résumé d'auteur