II. THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL AND VR

The Atlantic Council is one of the world’s leading foreign affairs think tanks. Founded in 1961 to support the transatlantic alliance, the Atlantic Council has, over time, grown to encompass a global footprint, in both geographic and thematic senses. The Council routinely engages on global environmental challenges, convening world leaders to discuss climate-related challenges and producing thought pieces and policy briefs—reports, issue papers, and blog posts—on how best to solve climate change.

3 “Number of video gamers worldwide, by region,” Statista, September 7, 2021, https://www.statista.com /statistics/293304/number -video-gamers/#:~:text=In %20total%2C%20there %20were%20an,billion %20gamers%20across %20the%20globe

The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock) is pushing the outer boundaries of what a think tank does and how it goes about doing it, with working with the massive gaming industry to combat climate change as one example. Gaming, among the most common activities in the world (more than three billion people worldwide are now “gamers”), is a useful tool for delivering socially and environmentally valuable content and actionable messaging to a mass audience.3 Over the past several years, the Center has built productive, focused relationships with game development companies and experts in gaming fields, including simulation, visualization, animation, visual effects, sound engineering, and more.

212M North America +0.7% YoY

408M Europe

+4.0% YoY

289M Latin America

+6.2% YoY

434M Middle East & Africa

+10.1% YoY

1,615M Asia-Pacific +4.8% YoY

Source: Newzoo | Global Games Market Report | June 2021 newzoo.com/globalgamesreport Source: Newzoo Global Games Market Report June 2021

VR is among the most powerful gaming vehicles for delivering messaging and actionable guidance about addressing climate change, which is why Arsht-Rock is building a program of work focused on VR and climate resilience action. This report resulted from a one-year VR feasibility study led by the Council’s Arsht-Rock Resilience Center and the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. The study was intended to be the first step in a multiyear effort featuring VR as a tool to combat climate change.

The yearlong pilot study yielded three products: this report, which examines VR’s potential as a tool for combating and adapting to climate change; a technical paper outlining practicalities involved in building a climate-focused VR experience; and a VR prototype. To develop them, we created a core project team drawn from the Resilience Center’s staff and nonresident fellows, including several from within the gaming industry, and the Scowcroft Center’s strategic foresight staff. Over one year, the core project team consulted with an outside expert group, consisting of VR professionals from within the gaming industry, climate scientists, psychologists, a climate psychiatrist, marketing professionals, city planners, and climate risk specialists, and also drew additional evidence from desk research.

Our long-term goal is to develop a full VR experience focusing on climate change for use by current and future world leaders. We intend to place our VR experience in front of all those who attend apex global policymaking and business forums such as G7 or G20 meetings, UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COPs), the Munich Security Conference or the Davos Global Leadership Summit. We intend to make our VR experience available to all those who create or influence climate, development or conservation policy and related awarenessraising, including: heads of state (and advisors); national ministers (and advisors); national legislators (and advisors); the most senior officials within multilateral and supranational institutions, e.g., the European Union, the United Nations system, and the major international development banks such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund; senior executives within the world’s largest corporations, foundations, and non-governmental organizations; reporters and influencers from within the world’s print, online, and television media; and senior officials from within major civil society organizations such as philanthropies.