Pathbreak: A Biodiversity-Food-Governance Game as a laboratory for re-imagining biodiversity governance

Biodiversity loss is fundamentally driven by collective-action dilemmas, yet tools making these complex trade-offs tangible remain scarce. We introduce Pathbreak: A Biodiversity–Food–Governance Game, an experiential laboratory for re-imagining biodiversity governance, developed drawing on over a decade of experience. Moving beyond stylized models, Pathbreak integrates first-order dilemmas—agricultural yields versus ecosystem resilience—with second-order challenges such as political legitimacy, trust, and intersectionality. Through qualitative analysis of debriefings from five pilot studies involving participants with a range of knowledge about biodiversity (n=50), we demonstrate the efficacy of the game as a proof-of-concept boundary object. The study shows that participants engage with economic trade-offs alongside deeper dynamics of power and policy time-lags. Despite tensions between playability and ecological realism, Pathbreak acts as a catalyst for transformative, transdisciplinary learning. This framework effectively bridges the gap between biodiversity science and the societal transformations required to reverse ecological decline.