Abstract:

Climate change is a global and systemic issue, which can be considered as “the greatest threat to global health inthe 21st century” (WHO, 2015). Current climate change is caused by human activities (IPCC, 2023), mainly due to fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, causing excessive emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The rise of the planet’s average temperature – global warming – is increasingly tangible: humankind faces more frequent extreme weather events, heat waves, wildfires, plus desert expansion, glacial retreats and sea ice loss, among other impacts. Terms as climate crisis or climate emergency are often used to underline the urgent need to mitigate the impacts of climate change, for humans and other forms of life in the planet. Since world leaders have been slow in addressing the challenges of climate change, public engagement with science and the environment is strongly necessary to bring more attention and to mobilize more people for the cause of environmental protection. Concepts of environmental education and environmental literacy provide useful frameworks to communicate and to educate the general public and specific stakeholders about the issues at stake regarding climate change, aiming towards changing their attitudes and behaviors.

In this realm, ClimAID can be considered as an innovative project, combining climate change, cultural heritage and urban art. On the one hand, climate change has impact on meaningful and valuable cultural heritage sites. On the other hand, cultural heritage can provide an insight of methods and good practices for adaptation to climate change (ICOMOS, 2019). This EU Creative Europe co-funded project gathers the following institutions and organizations: Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain; project leader), Lusófona University (Portugal), Centre Dot (Cyprus), Gruppo Archeologico Romano (Italy), Municipality of Ios (Greece) and BoaMistura (Spain). More information about the ClimAID project here: https://www.climaidproject.eu

The innovation of the ClimAID lies within the variety of methodologies and activities proposed, such as the development and testing of a 3D environment. To start, the project team compiled best practices of cultural heritage related with climate change, four sites per partner country, twenty sites in total, in the following typologies: portable building techniques, windmills and watermills, aqueducts and, finally, drystone terraces for agriculture. These selected cultural heritage sites will be showcased in a so-called Open Library (Open Resource Platform), which will include a 3D environment to allow users to experience these heritage sites in a virtual reality (VR) application, as well as an e-learning course for cultural organisations to connect heritage with climate change. In particular, the VR application will include at least one heritage site from each of the consortium’s countries, modeled in 3D, to be integrated in a fictional environment that allows the users to interact and to be immersed, featuring emblematic windmills and watermills from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus.

In the presentation, the main goal is to briefly showcase and demonstrate the VR application, as well as to discuss the main lessons learned from the development of this 3D environment and from the preliminary testing conducted before launching the public version.

Keywords:

Cultural heritage, climate change, virtual reality, environmental literacy.