Abstract
While the diversity of the environmental services provided by agroforestry systems are widely acknowledged, the nature and magnitude of the services they produce depends on producers' choices. Many policy instruments have been proposed to influence farmers' choice toward a higher provision of environmental services. However, anticipating the potential responses of producers to such instruments is a complex issue. In this chapter, we present the results of the application of an original methodology based on participatory and prospective approach conceived and implemented with local stakeholders and producers to test the interest of some instrument to promote environmental services provision. This method consists in co-designing thanks to local and scientific knowledge specific role-playing games that enable the producers to simulate their practices' choices and to observe their effects on their agricultural production, incomes and environmental services. The application of these role-playing games in two coffee producing areas in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, show the diversity of producers' responses according to scenarios of implementation of coercive (application of environmental legislation) and incentive measures (green credit, certification, payment for environmental services). Although this method has some limitation (no predictive results), we argue that it is of great interest to design innovations in terms of management and instruments adapted to farmers and SAF conditions.