On March 21st, 2023, Boğaziçi University organized a final Living Lab in Konya, Turkey, within the scope of the InTheMED project. It was a full-day event with over 25 participants joining from various sectors and institutions, including local farmers, academia, NGOs, irrigation unions, and officials from public institutions such as State Hydraulic Works, Directorate of Agriculture and Forestry, Konya Plains Regional Development Administration, and Chamber of Agriculture.
The purpose of the final living lab in Konya was to share the outputs of the socio-economic dynamic system model and to make a model-based policy analysis with a wide stakeholder group. To that end, participants set crop yield goals, hence determined the desired irrigation level for crops, and also the amount of land allocated to each crop, and experimented with policy options suggested in the previous living labs; namely, surface water transfer, well policy (open access vs no access regimes), and irrigation technology.
Participants showed a high level of interest and commitment to the interactive scenario analysis and participatory policy design sessions.
