From psychotherapy to education, Virtual Reality has became a tool applied in many fields. In fact, this technology provides the opportunity to embody, live, and understand existent realities and possible futures.
This is particularly interesting to encourage behavioral change for sustainability. By bringing psychologically distant events (both in time and space, as social inequalities or climate change) to people’s immediate reality, the relationship between human behavior and its impact can be made less abstract. VR has therefore the potential to foster social impact by showing the possible futures the individual can contribute to. NGOs are already making use of this technology to display their projects and their impact in the communities, which allows to present different perspectives and open dialogue between stakeholders.
Even though VR experiences are currently human-assisted, the technology is on the way to becoming a mass consumer product, that can be used without any external support. Apart from the technical improvements to make it more affordable and convenient for user adoption, we need to be, as with all new technologies, aware of any ethical concerns that could emerge.
As part of a cooperation between swissnex Brazil and oikos International, the webinar on “VR for Sustainability” will present how VR can be employed in the education and sensitization to sustainability issues. With Pedro Kayatt, Founder of VRMonkey, Bruno Weis, Communication Coordinator at Instituto Socioambiental – ISA , Philippe Bertrand, Co-Founder of BeAnotherLab and Maximilian Stoller, Founder of respecTomorrow, we invite NGOs, educational institutions and sustainability-oriented organizations to explore with us the state of the art of VR in Brazil, some ethical concerns about this technology and examples of its application in sustainably-related projects.
Date: 20th of May 2020
Time: 10:30 – Brazil / 15:30 – Switzerland
