Towards Raising an Environmentally-conscious Generation in India 

1.0 The Background

The importance of educating our children and youth in ensuring a sustainable future for all of us cannot be stressed enough. How else is a future generation of informed, aware, and environmentally-conscious citizens to be created if not through effective educational tools for our children and youth? The Indian Constitution states that it is the responsibility of every citizen to protect the environment. Underscoring the importance of environmental education, in 2003, a Supreme Court judgement made the teaching of environmental studies mandatory for all levels of formal education. Promoting environmental educational tools on a larger platform, in its 57th meeting in December 2002, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, 2005- 2014  (DESD) 'emphasising that education is an indispensable element for achieving sustainable development'.

Placed in this context, Centre for Environment Communication has been consistently designing and conducting innovative environmental communication programmes employing various media such as films, on-ground communication, live demonstrations, interactive modules,  communication via print and social media etc. These seminal programmes promote behaviour change in children and youth towards environmental sustainability via CEC’s five thematic centres.

2.0 Communicating Environment to Children

Children are naturally curious. They are forever full of the what, why, when, where and how of the world around them as most things are a new experience for them. But living as we are in cities where the connect with Nature is limited and oftentimes, children see nothing of it, their curiosity about Nature is stunted. Since they see little of it, they question little and consequently, understand even less about the how our natural ecosystem and our very existence are intertwined. Therefore, there is a need to create for them situations where they can feel the natural experiences in a tactile and emotive way, in a way that their curiosity is piqued. That will be the doorway to establishing a life-long connects with Nature. So, how is this curiosity about Nature to be piqued in the midst of the urban jungle?

3.0 Using Films as a Tool for ESD

CEC believes, based on its multiple experiences, that effectively employing evocative Nature films is a very powerful and impactful tool for ESD. Children are quick to grasp a situation and are able to very quickly think through and work towards solutions. So introducing them to the infinite wonders of nature via films, and thus leading them on to understand the environmental challenges today are a sure way of nurturing environmentally-conscious future citizens.

Films are the most impactful audio-visual medium that sends subliminal messages while creating the atmosphere wherein all senses are immersed in the experience, eliciting an emotional response. A film is thus a magical tool to raise eco-awareness in children. It captures stark realities in a manner that jolts us out of our sense of complacency. The series of film festivals organised by CEC has shown that there is perhaps no better way than films to impress upon our children that “environment” is not a “boring” subject but an interactive living eco-system that responds to our participation in ways that we can touch and see, every day.

CEC has organised a series of film festivals across schools and institutions for children and youth in Delhi and NCR, engaging more than 2000 children and youth in its various events and ongoing programmes. It has also launched its flagship programme, Green Buddies Film Festival, to engage children and youth on a sustained basis towards positive environmental action on a larger platform. 

4.0 CEC Initiatives employing Films as ESD Tools: In Brief

 I. Green Hub Festival 2016 Celebrating Northeast

Presented by: North East Network, Dusty Foot Production, and Centre for Environment Communication

Date: May 13-15, 2016

Venue: Green Hub, Jonak, Kumargaon, Tezpur, Assam

ACTIVITIES:

Films & Makers; Anthology of Shots; In Conversation; Expert Talks & Discussions; Musical Nite & Delightful Cuisine

Films being screened: Manas - Return of the Giants; Walking with the Wolves; Multiple Screening of Films by Green Hub Fellows from different parts of the Northeast.

II. THE ELEPHANT FESTIVAL – Celebrating World Wildlife Day, March 3, 2016

Participants: Children and youth from Prayas Juvenile Aid Centre, Tughlakabad and all its centres in Delhi; PVR Nest: NGO Vidya Foundation

Organised by: Centre for Environment Communication (CEC), Prayas Institute for Juvenile Justice and Adoptionscentrum

Partners: The Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, The International Elephant Film Festival, PVR Nest, Green Future Foundation, Wildlife SOS and Magic Bus; in association with United Nations and CITES to celebrate the World Wildlife Day, March 3, 2016.

Activities: Film screenings; interactive workshop; Quiz and painting competition; Animal Pictionary; On the spot skit presentation on festival theme.

Films screened - 6: The Jungle Gang meets the Elephant by Krishnendu Bose; Elephant Talk 2015: Asian Elephants in the Wild; Elephants Never Forget; On the Right Track, and Living with Giants.

Workshop theme: Understanding the role of the Elephant in the eco-system; Conserving the Elephant: Challenges and solutions

Skit theme: Act for the Elephant

III. CEC CLIMATECONNECT Film Festival in Delhi and NCR

Classes: VII, VIII, IX, X and XI

No. of Activities: 10

Participating Schools: TSMS Faridabad, Lotus Valley School Noida, DPS Gautam Buddh Nagar and Tagore International School

Activities: Film screening/Session with Filmmakers, Interactive Panel Discussions, Expert Talks, A Reality Show, A Climate Change presentation by children of invited schools (one speaker per school – 5 minutes only), A filmmaking competition, a photo exhibition, An Al Gore presentation, A Snake and Ladder Climate Change Game, A Solar Power Cooker Live Demonstration.

Films Screened: Melting Paradise by Vijay Bedi, The Final Tide by Vikram Mishra, Carbon Merchants by Aaradhana Kohli Kapur and Shelter

Expert Talk and Discussion Topics

• Impact on Earth of a One-Degree Rise in Temperature
• Climate Change: Political Discourses
• Climate Change and Me: How I Am Connected to Climate Change

IV. CLIMA FILM FEST

Partners: United Nations Foundation, Good Relations India, Panos South Asia, CPREEC and M.O.P. Vaishnav College and Ennovate Global - CEC partner

In the run-up to the Secretary General Climate Summit at UN headquarters on September 23, Clima Film Fest ‘14 aimed at creating maximum buzz about the impacts of climate change on our lives. The objective of the festival was to tell people through the medium of films and discourses with the experts about what exactly is climate change, how it is impacting our lives and how one can adapt to it. The festival was also very important in the context of the recent release of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Reports. A collection of compelling stories across India, highlighting evidences of the real impacts of and adaptations to climate change, underscored the spectacular festival. 

Issues Explored

1. Impact of climate change on natural resource-based livelihood in rural India.
2. Climate change and rising sea levels in the Sunderbans.
3. Local climate change impacts in Sunderbans in a participatory video.
4. Landfill gas cleaning and flaring technology.
5. India: Towards a clean and energy-efficient economy.
6. Reducing Emissions from deforestation and degradation.
7. Clean and energy-efficient technology for the small-scale glass industry.
8. Govt-citizen partnership for sustainable cities.
9. Towards sustainable habitats by using depleting natural resources to the benefits of all.
10. Artificial glaciers to beat the drought in high-altitude areas.
11. Impact on Earth of a one-degree rise in temperature.
12. Small scale sustainable renewable energy programmes.
13. Conservation of precious water resources such as wetlands.
14. The ground reality of climate change and the global scenario.

Expert Discussion Session Topics

• Climate Change and the Coasts
• Communicating Climate Change: A Panel Discussion on Climate Change and Media
• Adaptation to Climate Change for the State of Tamil Nadu
• Climate Change and Chennai City

Films Screened

Missing, Where is my Home and The Forest Beautiful by Krishnendu Bose; are we ready to dig in by Saransh Sugandh; Negotiating Justice and Tales Of Gorakhpur: Path Towards A Climate-Resilient Future by Rishu Nigam; Redemption - A Redd + Story From India by Ahona Dutta Gupta; Ring The Changes by Kanishka Singh; Breathe Easy by Aditi Banerjee; Building For A Greener World by Rita Banerji; Ladakh's Artificial Glaciers by Rajendra Srivathsa Kondapalli; Strange Days On Planet Earth - The One Degree Factor by Rob Whittlesey; Lighter Burden, Brighter Future by Sanjay Barnela; Melting Paradise Ajay and Vijay Bedi; Mean Sea Level and Don’t Cut My Head Off  by Pradip Saha

V. COMING SOON: CEC FLAGSHIP INITIATIVE - GREEN BUDDIES FILM FESTIVAL

Green Buddies Film Festival is India’s first niche green film festival exclusively for children and youth. It is a unique green festival which provides a stage for the voices of children and youth to be heard on the subject of the environment. For those who are already “green buddies” with the environment, this festival will be a unique opportunity to showcase their efforts via films and other environmental communication tools and formats; for those who are yet to understand the importance of conserving the environment, the festival will be an awakening, an initiation into the subject. The festival is an exclusive Flagship Initiative of the Centre for Environment Communication (CEC).

5.0 About Centre for Environment Communication (CEC)

Centre for Environment Communication (CEC) is committed to raising awareness among children, youth, and adults proactively on environmental issues and promoting action to concretise the awareness. Through a consistent and sustained call for awareness and action, CEC aims to gradually engender behaviour change, at large, towards the environment and make its conservation a part of our daily concerns towards creating a good life. CEC has partnered with UNICEF, DELHI GOVERNMENT, JACKSON HOLE WILDLIFE FILM FESTIVAL, PVR NEST for its various projects. CEC also received support from leading environmental organisations such as Climate Reality and Connect4Climate, University of Stirling, the UK for its various programmes.

Mission: Communicating for Creating Sustainable Societies

Thematic Centres: CEC has established five thematic centres: Climate Change Communication Centre (C4); Biodiversity Communication Centre (BCC); Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Communication Centre (WASHCC); Green Films Centre (GFC), and Corporate Employees Engagement Centre (CEEC)} which strategically spotlight its primary areas of engagement. The Centres seek to influence social, economic and instrumental change on environmental issues at the level of the society and consequently, catalyse appropriate policy interventions by the government.

Collective efforts for far-reaching changes (climate change) are possible and realistic should politicians choose to listen to the voice of their young people.

Students at New Delhi at another interaction with  with Prof Mathew Hibberd

The 22nd United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, COP22 marks the 22nd yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21). Post the historic CoP21 held in Paris on November 30, 2015, India became the 62nd country to ratify the Paris deal with 14 more countries committing to ratify the deal before the end of 2016. With the ratification, “India has to implement an array of standards in its energy production and emission monitoring. India had also linked the ratification of the treaty to its admission to the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Getting the agreement implemented is a key strategic objective that President Barack Obama has set for himself before he leaves office in less than four months.” (The Hindu, October 2, 2016).

Against such a backdrop, as the world waits for the ratification from other countries so that the Agreement meets the need of slightly more than 3 percentage points to reach the 55 per cent threshold, it is pertinent to ask where does youth stand, against such a backdrop, in their understanding and perception of the climate issues. Our study, “ClimateAction: Youth Voices – A Four Nation Report” conducted across four nations, two Asian and two European — India, Vietnam, Italy and the UK — by the University of Stirling, Scotland and Centre for Environment Communication, New Delhi brings into sharp focus the pressing need to engage the youth into climate change talks to understand and platform their ideas, expectations and solutions to a cleaner climate.

The now worldwide Divestment Campaign is a powerful example of youth action for a clean climate. The divestment campaign which began on US college campuses in 2011 slowly grew into a nationwide divestment campaign with more than 400 US colleges and universities joining in. To quote the Guardian: “The speed at which the fossil fuel divestment campaign is growing seems to have rattled its opponents in the coal and oil lobbies.” So why not involve more and more youth to create a cleaner climate? What do the young people across the four nations involved in our study think about climate change?

Students at New Delhi interact with Prof Mathew Hibberd

The ClimateAction: Youth Voices – Four Nation Report finds out that today’s youth believes they will inherit a deteriorating environmental situation from older generations, with some arguing that the young generation will be required to pay a greater price for profligacy of earlier generations. There was, however, uneven knowledge of key events relating to climate change. For example, some of our focus group members had not heard about the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (CoP) in Paris in November 2015. Only a small minority of focus group participants were actively involved in climate change campaigns. There was clear support for focus group findings that young people lack resources to take effective action; do not practice daily rituals that might be more eco-friendly; and that the lack of immediacy means that relevance of climate change to daily lives remains low.

An international binding agreement was considered vital in tackling key ecological problems of the 21st century. But many argued that when it comes to action there is still a lack of political will relating to the enforcement of climate change agreements. Youth from Europe and Asia remain pessimistic to the international community’s ability to implement such an agreement.

Youth look to definitive leadership and institutional support as a key ongoing requirement for climate change and look to local, national and international institutions, public and private, to provide that the stewardship and, crucially, the funding for infrastructural projects and services that can affect real environmental change. Their viewpoint came with the expectation of a substantive and viable solution at Paris, the absence of which, they said, would not only have a disastrous impact on environmental issues but would also undermine key social problems which, to their minds, have been worsened by climate change. One problem highlighted was the issue of migration where participants see a direct and causal link between mass movements of people, crop failure, extreme weather and climate change. Another pertinent issue was that of ‘free riders’ — those who seek to evade responsibility for climate change whether they are individuals or nations. Climate change is a collective issue requiring societal solutions that go beyond individual involvement.

The world’s poorest are seen to be disproportionately affected by climate change. This, paradoxically, lessens the importance of climate change among some, especially in India and Vietnam, as fighting poverty remains the key issue. There was strong support across focus groups for advanced national economies in the West, the USA, Canada, Europe, etc., to support the developing countries through financial or technical support in adopting climate change initiatives. While the UN was seen to be a key mediator in coming to a successful climate agreement, yet the dependence of its decision on the unanimity among its five permanent members — China, France, Russia, UK and USA — was seen to somewhat weaken its authority.

Youth across the four nations have come to believe that all the major institutions of our modern societies have largely failed to engage them in climate change issues, let alone to motivate and mobilise them into changing their behaviours towards more climate-conscious lifestyles. One of the prominent problems identified in this research is that common visions or mutual understandings of climate change have remained difficult to execute properly, whether one looks at international agreements or initiatives in affecting behavioural change.

It should be noted, however, that the cause for audience skepticism and pessimism found in this research is not simply due to the failure of the major institutions involved in the tackling of climate change. The story is, arguably, far more complex than lack of relevancy or a perceived lack of leadership or green-washing and so on. It relates more to deep-seated social vacuum at the macro and micro level in societies. Many people view climate change messages through ideological or social frameworks in line with their nationality, political beliefs, socio-demographic data – age (of especial importance for this study), gender, class, ethnicity, location, peer group, and so on. Climate change is tied closely to vaguer and contested notions of national, regional and local identities, cultural meanings and values and audience dissemination of texts and images. As such, climate change communications stretch beyond the realm of science, government policy and targets. As the Alliance of Religion and Conservation argues:

The emphasis on consumption, economics and policy usually fails to engage people at any deep level because it does not address the narrative, the mythological, the metaphorical or the existence of memories of past disasters and the way out (quoted in Hulme, 2009: 356).

Climate change communications, in other words, might generate much stronger impacts in communities if they speak to the reality of people’s life in a subtle, more “naturalised” way. The agreement at the Paris CoP needs to be ratified and enforced in ways that different people can understand and adopt. Key to this process are the leading industrialised countries and the leading developing nations such as BRICS. Special hope has been placed in President Obama to lead the USA and help secure success thus reinforcing his legacy as a forward-looking and progressive democratic president.

While young people are hopeful of the Paris Agreement being successfully ratified and implemented, they are also realistic enough to understand that all countries need to make major changes and sacrifices in order to help secure a better chance of limiting the damaging and pernicious impacts of climate change. Collective efforts for far-reaching changes are possible and realistic should politicians choose to listen to the voice of their young people.   

Greater cooperation through carbon trading could reduce the cost of climate change mitigation by 32 percent by 2030, according to a new World Bank report released today at an international carbon event in Vietnam. 

New modelling analysis undertaken for the State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2016 report shows that increased international carbon trading could enable large-scale emissions reductions at much lower cost than at present, based on the carbon mitigation goals spelled out in countries’ national climate plans under the Paris Agreement -- the Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs.  By the middle of the century, an international market has the potential to reduce global mitigation costs by more than 50 percent.  

The goal of limiting emission reductions to meet a 2°C or lower target will be difficult to achieve cost-efficiently without more carbon trading, according to the report, prepared by the World Bank and launched at the 15th Assembly of the Partnership for Market Readiness.

“The more we cooperate through carbon trading, the larger the savings and the greater the potential to increase ambition by countries in the short term,” said John Roome, Senior Director for Climate Change at the World Bank. “To be effective, carbon pricing policies must be coordinated with other energy and environmental policies –this will require collaboration within and between countries.”

The Paris Agreement, reached at COP21 in late 2015, sets up a framework for global cooperation through carbon markets. Over 100 countries consider carbon pricing initiatives as part of their NDCs, through emissions trading within or across borders, international crediting, carbon taxation and other measures.

Under this new cooperative framework, one country can benefit from mitigation activities resulting in emission reductions in another country to fulfill its NDC. The report indicates that financial flows of 2–5 percent of gross domestic product in countries with lower-cost mitigation activities could be realized for investments that will reduce emissions by 2050.

The report also shows that momentum on carbon pricing has continued to grow. In 2016, 40 national jurisdictions and over 20 cities, states, and regions are putting a price on carbon, including seven out of 10 of the world’s largest economies. The coverage of carbon pricing initiatives on global emissions has increased threefold over the past decade, translating to the equivalent of around 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide (GtCO2e), or about 13 percent of global GHG emissions. In addition, governments raised about US$26 billion in revenues from carbon pricing initiatives in 2015. This represents a 60 percent increase compared to the revenues raised in 2014.

This year saw the launch of two new carbon pricing initiatives: British Columbia put a price on emissions from liquefied natural gas plants alongside its carbon tax, and Australia implemented a safeguard mechanism to the Emissions Reduction Fund, requiring large emitters that exceed their set limit to offset excess emissions.

Looking ahead, next year could see the largest ever increase in the share of global emissions covered by carbon pricing initiatives in a single year. If the Chinese national Emissions Trading System (ETS) is implemented in 2017 as planned, it would become the largest carbon pricing initiative in the world, surpassing the EU ETS. Initial estimates show that emissions covered by carbon pricing initiatives could increase from 13 percent to between 20 and 25 percent of global GHG emissions.

In April, the High Level Panel on Carbon Pricing called upon the international community to double the percentage of global emissions covered by explicit carbon prices to 25% by 2020 and to double it again to 50% within a decade. Heads of State from Canada, Chile, Ethiopia, France, Germany and Mexico are among the leaders calling for this increased commitment. 

The report was prepared with the technical support of Ecofys and Vivid Economics.

To download the full report, visit https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/25160

This post was originally posted here.

Humans' appetite for gnawing away at the fabric of the Earth itself is growing prodigiously. According to a new UN report, the amount of the planet's natural resources extracted for human use has tripled in 40 years.

A report produced by the International Resource Panel (IRP), part of the UN Environment Programme, says rising consumption driven by a growing middle class has seen resources extraction increase from 22 billion tons in 1970 to 70 billon tons in 2010.

It refers to natural resources as primary materials and includes under this heading biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals.

The increase in their use, the report warns, will ultimately deplete the availability of natural resources—causing serious shortages of critical materials and risking conflict.

Growing primary material consumption will affect climate change mainly because of the large amounts of energy involved in extraction, use, transport and disposal.

Irreversibly Depleted

"The alarming rate at which materials are now being extracted is already having a severe impact on human health and people's quality of life," said the IRP's co-chair, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra.

"We urgently need to address this problem before we have irreversibly depleted the resources that power our economies and lift people out of poverty. This deeply complex problem, one of humanity's biggest tests yet, calls for a rethink of the governance of natural resource extraction."

The IRP says the information contained in the new report supports the monitoring of the progress countries are making towards achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. It also shows the uneven way in which the materials exploited are shared.

The richest countries consume on average 10 times as much of the available resources as the poorest and twice as much as the world average.

This total—almost three times today's amount—will probably increase the acidification of the world's waters, the eutrophication of its soils and waters, worsen soil erosion and lead to greater amounts of waste and pollution.

The report also ranks countries by the size of their per capita material footprints—the amount of material required in a country, an indicator that sheds light on its true impact on the global natural resource base. It is also a good way to judge a country's material standard of living.

Europe and North America, which had annual per capita material footprints of 20 and 25 tons in 2010, are at the top of the table. China's footprint was 14 tons and Brazil's 13. The annual per-capita material footprint for Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and West Asia was 9-10 tons, and Africa's was below 3 tons.

Unprecedented Amounts

Global material use has rapidly accelerated since 2000, the report says, as emerging economies such as China undergo industrial and urban transformation that requires unprecedented amounts of iron, steel, cement, energy and building materials.

Compounding the problems, there has been little improvement in global material efficiency since 1990. The global economy now needs more material per unit of GDP than it did at the turn of the century, the IRP says, because production has moved from material-efficient economies such as Japan, South Korea and Europe to far less materially-efficient countries such as China, India and some in south-east Asia.

The report says uncoupling the increasing material use from economic growth is the "imperative of modern environmental policy and essential for the prosperity of human society and a healthy natural environment."

This will require investment in research and development, combined with better public policy and financing, creating opportunities for sustained economic growth and job creation.

The IRP also recommends putting a price on primary materials at extraction to reflect the social and environmental costs of resource extraction and use, while reducing consumption. The extra funds generated, it says, could then be invested in R&D in resource-intensive sectors of the economy.

It is concerned that the expanding demand for materials that low-income countries are likely to experience could contribute to local conflicts such as those seen in areas where mining competes with agriculture and urban development.

This article was originally posted on EcoWatch.

A Moroccan fog-harvesting project was awarded a UN Climate Change prize in Bonn, Germany.

The system, developed and installed by Morocco based NGO Dar Si Hmad, is said to be the largest fog-water harvesting system in the world.

Thanks to the project, more than 400 people from isolated villages on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Morocco have access to running water.

This has been of enormous value to the village women who used to spend more than three hours a day walking to fetch water from far-away wells.

Dr. Jamila Bargach, Executive Director of Dar Si Hamd, said: “Berber women bore the laborious task of carrying water from distant wells – a burden that greatly limited opportunities for young women.”

Fog harvesting utilises a specialised mesh that traps water droplets from the fog.

The condensed trapped droplets then fall into a container, which slowly fills up to form a significant reserve of water.

Dar Si Hmad’s project involves 600 square meters of mesh netting, seven storage reservoirs, six solar panels and more than 10,000 meters of piping.

Bargach said: “The fog project should not simply be reduced to the story of technical and success: there are more complex and intertwined stories to tell... One narrative is that of curiosity and aspiration; one of motivation and quest for dignity; and one of rigour and determination.”

The system has received the prize under the Momentum for Change Women for Results focus area for providing a sustainable water source to combat the effects of desertification.

UNFCCC Spokesman Nick Nuttal said: “It is impressive to see so many original and creative ways to tackle climate change... It’s also great to see a winner from Morocco, this year’s host of the United Nations Climate Change Conference.”

This article was originally posted here.

The developing world and emerging markets are among the most exciting places for climate policy and innovation, according to a former White House official who advised the Obama administration in the run-up to the COP20 summit in Lima, Peru.

It's hard to comprehend the concept of oceans getting more acidic. Unless you become the coral.

It’s not easy to get people exercised about ocean acidification. Yes, it’s a nasty consequence of climate change, a potential death sentence for oysters, clams, sea urchins and, most of all, coral. But it’s slow-motion extermination, out of sight of most humans, and that makes it difficult for us to feel much of a connection—let alone any responsibility—for the calamitous process.

Researchers at Stanford, however, believe a good way to help people become more aware of their impact on nature may lie in a particularly unnatural experience—virtual reality (VR) immersion.

“Some experiences may not be well-suited for VR,” says Jeremy Bailenson, professor of communications at Stanford and director of its Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL). “But if we leverage what is special about the medium—the fact that you can move your body and interact with a scene—then we can create intense experiences that actually change you.”

Bailenson has been researching the value of VR as a teaching tool since the late 1990s, and he’s found that it can have considerably more impact than simply knowing that damage is being done to the natural world. Once someone can see, hear and even feel what’s happening from the perspective of plants and animals, he or she tends to understand their fate in a more visceral way and is more motivated to take action, he says.

That notion was borne out in a recent study by Bailenson and a team of scientists from Stanford, the University of Georgia and the University of Connecticut. They determined that immersing people in a VR experience was clearly more effective in getting through to them than simply showing them a video on the same subject.

The key was to have people become the coral.

In two worlds

The Stanford team worked with marine biologists to build a virtual replica of a reef around the Italian island of Ischia. Underground volcanic vents there have been spewing carbon dioxide, and that has given researchers the opportunity to closely analyze the effect on marine life—specifically how, as ocean water absorbs more carbon dioxide and becomes more acidic, it corrodes coral and the shells of crustaceans. 

From that model, the researchers programmed a VR experience that speeds up the destructive process,  allowing a person to first interact with a reef full of life, and then be an up-close-witness to decay as species disappear. Ultimately, the person takes on the perspective of a coral, one whose branches break off with an audible crack.

At its best, virtual reality, says Bailenson, enables you to have a “dual presence,” where you know you’re still in a room wearing a headset, but also actually can feel that you’re at the bottom of the sea. It’s important, he says, for the VR environment to respond your body’s movements.  

It also should to be an experience that stimulates multiple senses, including touch when possible. The coral reef VR, for instance, creates the sensation of a fishing net brushing against you. If it feels natural, notes Bailenson, the brain is able to treat the experience as authentic.

That said, Bailenson concedes it’s still difficult to measure the long-term impact of VR immersion. In other words, can it actually spur people to change their behavior for an extended period of time? In a previous study, Bailenson found that people who chopped down virtual trees, using a joystick that vibrated like a chainsaw, used 20 percent less paper afterwards than others who read about cutting down trees or watched a video about the process.

But that study and most of the other research to date has relied on follow-up questionnaires a week or two later. So, researchers haven’t really been able to determine how long VR-induced empathy endures. Bailenson thinks that is about to change.

“With the advent of mobile equipment, we are planning to run longitudinal studies, which means collecting data from very large, demographically diverse data sets,” he says. “This will be very important in discovering the impact of VR on the general public—from children to the elderly, and those from all socio-economic statuses and backgrounds.”

Teachable moments

Bailenson and the Stanford team have already begun taking steps to move virtual reality teaching beyond the research lab. Earlier this year, the Stanford Ocean Acidification Experience and a related VR documentary were featured in an arcade at the Trebeca Film Festival. “For a week, we had a constant line of people,” says Bailenson. “They were waiting in line to learn about marine science.”

And last week, the VR experience was made available to the public as a science education tool. It can now be downloaded for free and experienced on HTC Vive, a high-end virtual reality system that sells for about $800. While the consumer market for VR systems is still relatively small, the consensus is that sales will start to take off in the coming holiday season now that prices have begun dropping and headsets are no longer so unwieldy. Next year, according to the VR industry consulting firm KZero, more than 170 million units could be sold.

Bailenson hopes Stanford’s software will become a model for virtual reality “field trips” that will allow students to have experiences that can teach them about nature in a uniquely personal way.

To that end, he says museums have begun investing in VR systems to provide that opportunity.

“You’re not watching something, you’re doing it,” he says. “You learn by doing. These are magic, teachable moments.”

This blog post was originally posted here.