Global Network of REACT

REACT connects

REACT's global network interconnects scientists across disciplines to enable novel fusions of methods and solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation, to transfer knowledge to people, industries and decision makers and to negotiate timely regional implementation of new solutions at the governmental levels. REACT leans upon its global network of researchers, private and public partners and people at large to incorporate an environmental culture into every country and nation through locally relevant education.

Centralized Coordination - Independent National Teams

REACT promotes an efficient expansion of its global network through independent national coordination teams linking scientists with governments, businesses and individuals. Each national coordination team oversees and supports the development of regional adjustments of climate change solutions and educational programs to comply with unique dissimilar cultural, ethnic, economic and political settings of their country and region.

Five Areas of Knowledge Capital

Research groups within all five areas collaborate with REACT's educators on the development of the global environmental education program.

AREA 1: Climate Change Drivers and Processes - interconnects research groups concerned with the understanding of climate change drivers and how they activate feedback loops and irreversible chains of reactions over different time scales and subsystems.
AREA 2: Regional Consequences for Natural Systems - links research groups that map anticipated impacts of climate change on natural systems over local and regional spatial scales based on emission scenarios, model projections and nature of interactions between subsystems.
AREA 3: Direct and Indirect Impacts on Society - brings together natural and social scientists to evaluate the community resilience and regional adaptation strategies under the predicted range of climate change impacts in different parts of the world.
AREA 4: Pros and Cons of Currents Solutions - unites research groups that work on the development and testing of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and their evaluation through the prism of possible risks, relative benefits, cost efficiency, and feasibility.
AREA 5: New Solutions for Mitigation and Adaptation - creates fusions between researchers from all five areas to develop new strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation, taking into account pros and cons of the existing solutions and cultural, economic and climatic differences between regions.

REACT's Global Education Program

REACT performs a proof of concept, including development and calibration of its education and communication strategies, on a scale of a city in each country. Currently, Norway is running its pilot in Trondheim, with a follow-up plan to transfer its observations from the Norwegian pilot to the upcoming pilots in Scandinavia. Based on the city-scale proof of concept, REACT will pre-select the most efficient education strategies and foster their adaptation for the country scale. As part of this adaptation, national inter-sector partners will identify new community organizations, infrastructure and policies that must be introduced to ensure a relatively smooth involvement of people in the climate action.

REACT introduces four factors of activation to understand and overcome typical individual barriers to climate action, fill knowledge gaps and develop a fundamental environmental culture across nations and continents. Research suggests the following as the main barriers:

Persistent disinformation on social and mass media.
Lack of knowledge about the dominant role of individual consumption in driving climate change.
Confusion about which consumption areas lead to substantial greenhouse gas emissions.
Perceived remoteness of climate change impacts in high-income countries.
Perceived pointlessness of individual actions if they are not part of a large-scale effort.

Factors of activation

Four factors of activation - Information, Immersion, Education and Participation - are introduced in waves with a frequency of six months to negate each of the barriers to individual action. During each wave, REACT tracks public responses and assesses knowledge growth in each neighborhood and each layer of society, while analyzing relative efficiency of each method and their combinations.

Factor 1: Information

REACT produces films, interviews and public lectures exploring the predicted natural, social, economic and political consequences of climate change and existing solutions. Separate materials are produced for different parts of the demographic (age groups, gender, area) in different partner countries, using languages of the country. Responses of each social group are anonymously tracked through response tracking systems.

REACT's information campaigns range from purely educational to motivational, aiming to negate the disinformation deliberately spread through social media and to involve people at all levels in the implementation of regional solutions.

Information campaigns on city scales: Social and mass media campaigns using a range of platforms, advertising tools and work with journalists

Factor 2: Immersion

REACT is developing interactive Virtual Reality tools to immerse into local near-future climate change consequences on the homes, cities and life comfort of participants and interactively navigate to a better future through choices of individual actions. The final destination (best-case scenario) for those succeeding in reducing their carbon footprint by 45% is a fully sustainable city of the future. Immersive technologies help people understand what they can do as individuals, what is expected and required from governments and how their environments will look like in the near future with and without taking climate change actions, thus reducing the anxiety deriving from insecurity. REACT will perform Virtual Reality campaigns in public spaces such as shopping malls.

Immersion campaigns: Virtual Reality exhibitions in shopping malls

Factor 3: Education

Working together with teachers and teacher education students, REACT combines learning materials, films, carbon footprint calculators, apps, immersive technologies and planetarium to introduce a multifaceted climate change education at universities and schools. REACT involves families and friends of pupils and students in a public participation in the interactive Virtual Reality experience and motivates parents to support their children in taking environmental action.
Central to the REACT-reviewed teaching is the focus on understanding the complex relationships between economy, politics, human actions, climate change and environment.

Education: Revised sustainability education at selected schools, including virtual reality and planetarium sessions with families and friends

Factor 4: Participation

REACT will maintain a hyperbolized visibility of the collective action on a city scale in all partner countries through mass and social media, street advertising, public website and app. Our work with journalists and mapping of participation through website and app aims at creating a feeling of belonging to a large movement and mimic the effect of consumption policies, albeit with a stronger emotional involvement. To facilitate exchange of opinions and physical experience of growing participation, REACT will gather people during tree planting campaigns coordinated together with city authorities and advertised widely by public media.

Visibility of the growing participation on the international level will amplify the public response in each partner city and will further promote interest of journalists across partner countries.

Participation: Hyperbolized visibility of growing participation on city- and global scales

How REACT’s influence can spread across the city (an example of Trondheim, Norway).

Target cities: Medium-size university cities are a perfect platform for the REACT's pilots in each country.

Contact REACT's admin team for more details

Our admin and scientific teams will be happy to answer your questions about REACT's concept and strategies. Just contact us with your questions!