Nunavut students play at shaping the earth’s future

MICHAELA RODRIGUE
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Students at three Nunavut schools got to take the world into their own hands last week and shape the globe’s future.

Played on a hand-painted world map, the Global Change Game has players represent nine regions of the world and make decisions on everything from energy use to warfare, said Rob Altemeyer, the executive director of the Global Change Game.

Last week, students from Baker Lake, Rankin Inlet and Arviat assumed their new responsibilities and travelled in their imaginations through space and time to chart a new world history.

Speaking from the second stop on the Nunavut tour, Altemeyer said the 100 students who took part in the game at Jonah Amitnaaq Secondary School in Baker Lake were more than capable of dealing with world affairs.

“They discover there are a lot of solutions to the world’s problems,” Altemeyer said. “And the students probably already have some of those solutions, even if they may not have had a chance to practise them before.”

Game organizers start the players, who play the role of world leaders, and give them a run through of some of the problems facing each of the world’s regions. But how the students solve the problems and where they go from there is up to them.

Each player represents about 100 million people.

“There’s no shortage of work to be done in fixing up the world, and the players decide what they want to zoom in on,” Altemeyer said.

“Our job as facilitators is to help them through that learning process, but also to bring out some of the consequences of the decisions that the players may have made or not have made.”

Students at Jonah Amitnaaq managed to reduce the number of people living in poverty despite a major climb in the world’s population. They also managed to avoid any major wars and encourage foreign aid as they travelled from 1998 to 2022.

Creative ways of reducing the cutting of trees and using cleaner fuel sources included a shift to solar or wind power. Leaders in the African region decided to drop wood as a fuel source and instead used methane gas from animal manure.

Another group decided to capture the manure that was polluting their water supply and use it as fertilizer.

“The players decided well let’s capture the animal manure and compost it and turn it into fertilizer. Then we’ll have healthier soils, and healthier water and healthier people. That was a beautiful example of how when we improve the environment we improve the people,” Altemeyer said.

The trip was paid for by the federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

After the game was complete Altemeyer and the other facilitators, gave a lecture on Canada’s role in world affairs, and how those affairs impact on Canadian citizens.

“I think the students themselves may have been surprised with how much they knew. Certainly, they accomplished some remarkable things in the game,” he said.

“If international issues or world issues are something that they’re interested in, they certainly should consider that one of their many options as they graduate from school.”