Nick Kelly Queensland University of Technology and Markus Foth Queensland University of Technology
The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is planning to create its own metaverse in response to the threat of extinction due to rising sea levels. Tuvalu Minister of Justice, Communications and Foreign Affairs Simon Coffee made the announcement in a chilling speech to COP27 leaders.
Simon Coffee explained that the “worst-case scenario” plan involves creating a digital twin of Tuvalu in the metaverse that will replicate its beautiful islands and preserve its rich culture:
This tragedy is not exaggerated. […] Tuvalu may be the first country in the world to exist entirely in cyberspace, but if global warming continues, it won’t be the last.
The idea is that the metaverse will allow Tuvalu to “fully function as a sovereign state” while its inhabitants are forced to live elsewhere.
Coffee’s speech contains two important messages: the first is that the small island nation in the Pacific Ocean is facing an existential threat and is seeking to maintain its statehood with the help of technology.
The second message is that the future Coffee would choose for Tuvalu is to keep his nation on Earth while avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Thus, the announcement of the re-creation of Tuvalu in the metaverse became a way to attract the attention of the whole world.
What is a metaverse country?
The Metaverse represents a flourishing future in which augmented and virtual reality will become part of everyday life. There are many ideas of what the metaverse could look like, but the most popular is that of Meta (formerly Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Common to these concepts is the idea that the metaverse is made up of interoperable and immersive 3D worlds. The avatar created by each user could move from one virtual world to another with the same ease with which he moves from one room to another in the physical world.
The goal is that a person cannot even distinguish the real from the virtual, for better or for worse.
Coffee explains that three aspects of Tuvalu can be reproduced in the metaverse:
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Territory: A recreation of Tuvalu’s natural beauty that can be interacted with in many ways.
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Culture: The ability of Tuvaluans to interact with each other in a way that preserves their common language, norms and customs, wherever they are.
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Sovereignty: If the land over which the government of Tuvalu has sovereignty is lost (an unimaginable tragedy, but which they have begun to imagine), will he be able to gain sovereignty over virtual land?
How could this be done
If this offer from Tuvalu is literal and not just a symbol of the dangers of climate change, how can it be implemented?
From a technical point of view, it is already quite easy to create richly rendered, exciting and beautiful recreations of the territory of Tuvalu. In addition, thousands of online communities and 3D worlds (such as Second Life) demonstrate the possibility of creating fully virtual interactive spaces, each with its own culture.
The idea of combining these technological capabilities with management functions for Tuvalu’s “digital twin” is also feasible.
There are already experiments by governments creating digital counterparts and making decisions based on territory. For example, the Estonian electronic residence. This is a residence permit. onlinewhich non-Estonians can access to access services such as business registration. Another example is countries that have created virtual embassies on the platform. online Second Life.
However, combining and digitizing the elements that define a nation comes with significant technological and social challenges.
There are only about 12,000 citizens in Tuvalu. However, getting so many users to interact in real time in an immersive virtual world is a technical challenge. There are issues with bandwidth, processing power, and you have to take into account the fact that many users are disgusted with headphones or do not accept these technologies.
No one has yet shown that nation-states can successfully navigate the virtual world. Even if they could, some argue that the digital world makes nation-states redundant.
Tuvalu’s proposal to create its digital counterpart in the metaverse is a message in a bottle, a desperate response to a tragic situation. However, there is a hidden message here for those considering going virtual in response to the effects of climate change.
The metaverse is not a sanctuary
The Metaverse is based on the physical infrastructure of servers, data centers, routers network, screens and glasses of virtual reality. All of this technology has an associated carbon footprint and requires physical maintenance and energy. A study published in the journal Nature predicts that by 2025 the Internet will consume about 20% of the world’s electricity.
Idea country in the metaverse as a response to climate change is exactly the kind of thinking that brought us here. The language used for new technologies such as “cloud computing”, “virtual reality” and “metaverse” is presented as clean and green.
These terms are full of “technological solution” and “greenwashing“. They obscure the fact that technological responses to climate change often exacerbate the problem due to high energy and resource consumption.
What is the situation of Tuvalu?
Coffee realizes that the metaverse is not the solution to Tuvalu’s problems. The leader is explicit that we must focus on mitigating climate change through initiatives such as the fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty.
The video of his speech about Tuvalu’s transition to the metaverse is a huge success as a provocation. This had a great impact on the whole world, as did his touching speech during COP26, knee-deep in water.
However, Coffee offers:
Without global awareness and global commitment to our common well being, we may eventually find that the rest of the world will join us in the metaverse as their territories disappear.
It is dangerous to assume, even implicitly, that transition to the metaverse is a viable response to climate change. The Metaverse can certainly help preserve heritage and culture as a virtual museum and digital community, but it is unlikely to function as a surrogate for the nation state.
And in any case, it won’t work without the land, infrastructure, and electricity to power the Internet.
It would be much better to draw international attention to other Tuvalu initiatives described in the same report:
Project’s first initiative promotes diplomacy based on Tuvaluan values olaga fakafenua (general life systems), kaitashi (general responsibility) and fale-drank (Good Neighbor) in the hope that these values will encourage other countries to understand their shared responsibility to address climate change and sea level rise in order to achieve global prosperity.
The message in a bottle that Tuvalu is sending is not about creating nations in the metaverse at all. The message is clear: support community life systems, take common responsibility, and be good neighbors. The former cannot be transferred to the virtual world. The second requires that we consume less, and the third requires that we take care of ourselves.
Nick Kelly, Senior Lecturer in Interaction Design, Queensland University of Technology and Markus Voth, Professor of Urban Computer Science, Queensland University of Technology
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
Source: RPP
I’m a passionate and motivated journalist with a focus on world news. My experience spans across various media outlets, including Buna Times where I serve as an author. Over the years, I have become well-versed in researching and reporting on global topics, ranging from international politics to current events.