How is virtual reality a tool to tackle climate change?

See the full GLF Live series here.

The transportive nature of virtual reality can take us out of our bedroom and into someone else’s across the globe. We can turn between their walls, walk through their communities, explore the setting of their story. While entertaining, certainly (and especially in times of quarantine), this medium is not for naught in terms of empathy either. How better to understand someone than to walk in their shoes?

In this GLF Live, Al Jazeera‘s Contrast virtual reality platform producer Viktorija Mickute shared why this medium is powerful now and becoming ever more so in the changing world. The GLF Live formed part of the Storytelling Track of the GLF Bonn 2020 digital conference.

How is virtual reality a tool to tackle climate change? — Illustration by Jessica Ball

Why shouldn’t people be able to teleport wherever they want?
Palmer Luckey

Virtual reality is going to be an important technology. I am pretty confident about this.
Mark Zuckerberg

Viktorija Mickute is a Lithuanian journalist working as a producer at Al-Jazeera Contrast. With a background in documentary filmmaking, she is interested in new visual technologies and ways these enable innovative storytelling. Mickute has professional experience in both national and international media organizations and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for studies towards a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Missouri – Columbia.

Before joining Contrast, she hosted a social media live broadcast at Lithuanian National Television. She has also worked as an international news editor and reporter, covering events and crises, such as the Brussels terror attacks in 2016 and the plight of Syrian refugees in southeastern Turkey.