Simulating Sustainability: The 2030 SDG Game and Systems-Based Decision Making

This interactive session introduces the 2030 SDG Game as a participatory simulation tool that supports understanding of sustainability transformation through systems thinking and collective decision-making. While sustainability is often addressed through technical solutions or sectoral policies, real-world progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals requires shared understanding of interdependencies, trade-offs, and coordination across social, economic, and environmental domains.  The 2030 SDG Game simulates a shared world progressing towards 2030, in which participants pursue individual and collective goals under constraints related to time, resources, and societal and environmental conditions. Through gameplay, participants experience how actions in one domain influence outcomes in others, revealing tensions as well as opportunities for collaboration. The session engages multiple types of knowledge, including experiential, professional, policy-oriented, and academic perspectives, within a structured and reflective environment.  Originally designed in Japan in 2016 by Imacocollabo, a non-profit organisation focused on collaborative and experiential learning, the 2030 SDG Game was developed to make the complexity of sustainable development accessible to diverse audiences. Since its launch, the game has been widely used in corporate, public, and educational settings, and has also been applied in government and multilateral contexts, including United Nations–related processes and side events at global sustainability forums such as COP30 in Belém.  Beyond the simulation, facilitated reflection explicitly links learning to action. Participants are guided to connect insights from the game to real-world processes, including policy dialogue, organisational strategy, education, and cross-sector collaboration. Convened by EPIC Asia in collaboration with EPIC Africa, the session is grounded in the Educational Partnerships for Innovation in Communities (EPIC) Network, a global university–community partnership model supporting applied learning and collaborative problem-solving. The session presents the 2030 SDG Game as an adaptable method rather than a prescriptive solution, contributing to discussions on how sustainability science can better support practical impact and collective action.