Virtual Reality: Experiencing Climate Change from the Frontline in Fiji.

Above: Our Home, Our People - A virtual reality film depicting the reality of climate change in Fiji.\

Virtual Reality and Development

Sometimes, to really understand something, we need to ‘live it’. We need to be immersed in a place, in an event. We need to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Enter virtual reality.

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being used within the international aid and development sector, and for good reason. No longer seen as a ‘gimmick’, VR is a medium that allows for the viewer to be transported to a place, to ‘see’ the issues through the eyes of the storyteller.

Taking Fiji to Europe

In 2017, the World Bank commissioned the production of Our Home, Our People, a VR film on the impacts of climate change in the Pacific. Filmed in Fiji, and told by Fijians, it is a powerful account of the lived experience of climate change. And with the VR technology, the viewer also ‘lives’ this experience.

Team Leader of the World Bank’s Pacific Communications, Tom Perry, explained that Our Home, Our People was originally produced to influence decision-makers and leaders at the 2017 COP 23 Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.

The conference was scheduled for the middle of a European winter, in a large conference hall. Their challenge was to translate the Fijian experience to that very different, very foreign context in such a way that it was not simply just another conference presentation. They needed something that would stand out and make an impact on those present, including decision-makers.

VR was a tool that allowed, as Tom described, the World Bank to connect the ‘head’ to the ‘heart’ of the issue. The ‘head’ being the statistical details of climate change in the Pacific. The ‘heart’ being the people whose lived experience was the consequence of those statistics. The intention was to influence people in positions of power who could make decisions based on those statistics, ensuring they did so with an understanding of the people whose lives would be impacted by those decisions.

‘VR content, when executed effectively, is immersive, powerful, and, crucially for when you’re in a big conference centre with thousands of other people, very personal; it allows people to completely cut themselves off from all the noise and talk and just take themselves to another world on their own.

'We’ve seen the entire gamut of emotions: many people smiling widely, feeling really positive and optimistic; others taking off their headsets in tears. But what has been uniform in those responses is that they seem to have connected to the people in the story: Catalina, Asmita, Rai and Rupeni,’ Tom explained.

Tom believes Our Home, Our People achieved its objective of fostering connections with the Fijians in the story and, in doing so, fostered connections to the issue at heart – the urgent need for greater action on climate change and the particular vulnerability of the Pacific Islands and those that call them home.

Bringing the story home

The Our Home, Our People production team returned to the communities involved in the making of Our Home, Our People and held a special screening for them. This is such an important step in international and development communications, and so many other aspects of work within the field.

Too often we seek and information, input and ideas without ‘closing the loop’; without giving back. And, sometimes returning to show the final product to those who are at the centre of the story can be the most daunting. Tom explains this honestly and openly in his own blog - Completing the storytelling ‘circle’: a VR project goes home. He raises important and difficult questions around how people are represented and how that representation can or should be balanced with the importance of communicating a particular message.

The clip below shares the response of the communities involved when they were able to watch the film.

It is impossible not to be moved.

Learn more about the project at www.ourhomeourpeople.com. In 2017, the World Bank and Fijian Government came together to produce a virtual reality project about climate change in Fiji, called 'Our Home, Our People' (watch it here: https://youtu.be/toOLqRJDV8k). In April 2018, members of the production crew returned to the communities involved to present them with the film.

References

Featured image 

Woman wearing white virtual reality goggles by Ryan Adams (CC BY 2.0)

Video

Our Home, Our People, World Bank, Fiji.