**Please only sign up if you will be fully committed to attending and participating.  Sign up is limited to 10 people.**

Email: lstokes@mit.edu to sign up for this event.

The Mercury Game is a negotiation simulation that is designed to teach people about the role of science in international environmental policy making. Despite decades of scientific work on issues such as ozone depletion, climate change, and toxic chemicals, effectively communicating scientific uncertainty remains a major challenge in all environmental treaty negotiations. ??

Strategies for incorporating scientific information into policy include developing scientific assessments, setting up subsidiary bodies to treaty negotiations, and framing the information in an appropriate manner. How scientific information is perceived has been, and will remain, a key challenge facing all international environmental treaty-drafting efforts.

This Mercury Game is a role-play simulation aimed at scientists and students. Playing the game will help participants explore the consequences of representing scientific uncertainty in various ways in a policy context. The game focuses on the credibility of various sources of technical information, strategies for representing risk and uncertainty, and the balance between scientific and political considerations. ??The game will also require the players to grapple with political considerations. It explores the dynamic between the global “North” (the developed world) and the global “South” (the developing world) at the heart of most treaty-making difficulties. ??Ultimately, the role play should help to make clear how scientific information can be favorably employed in an environmental treaty making process.

The results of the game will be used in a doctoral research project on the relationship between science and policy in international environmental negotiations.

Led by Leah Stokes and Rebecca Saari