Arctic Turning Point: A Climate Futures Simulation
What happens when climate change reshapes not just our environment, but the conditions for conflict and cooperation across the planet?
(Registration limited to 20 participants)
🧭 The Experience
Arctic Turning Point is a 3-hour immersive simulation set in a near-future Arctic transformed by climate change.
As ice melts and new shipping routes open, the region is rapidly becoming a site of competing interests, from governments and industry to Indigenous communities and environmental coalitions.
In a world already shaped by geopolitical tension, the Arctic raises urgent questions:
Will a changing climate deepen patterns of competition and militarization or open the door to new forms of cooperation?
In this participatory experience, you’ll step into an unfolding scenario shaped by real-time developments, emerging tensions, and difficult trade-offs.
Together, we’ll go beyond discussing the future to practice navigating it as it happens.
⚡ What to Expect
Exploring this hypothetical future scenario, participants will:
Collaborate in small groups representing different perspectives
Receive “live” updates through audio, video, and “breaking news” signals
Respond to escalating challenges and system-level disruptions
Map the ripple effects of decisions using futures thinking tools
Create a tangible “artifact from the future”: a policy, proposal, tool or message that responds to the moment (sky’s the limit!)
No prior experience needed. Bring yourself, and we’ll give you all the tools you need to practice, play, and engage with these concepts!
🧠 Why This Matters
Climate change is not only an environmental crisis; it is reshaping the geopolitical landscape.
From resource competition to territorial claims, climate impacts are increasingly entangled with the drivers of conflict. At the same time, military activity and extractive systems continue to accelerate emissions and environmental degradation.
This simulation creates space to explore:
How climate change can intensify or transform conflict
The limits of systems built on competition and control
Alternatives to militarization and extraction
Pathways toward cooperation and shared stewardship
🌐 Part of StoryWorld 2026
This event is the opening experience of StoryWorld 2026: Climate, Conflict, and Collective Action, a season of participatory climate futures in The Climateverse.
Insights and artifacts from this session will feed into a virtual summer Planetary Commons storyworld, exploring possible new models of global governance.
This is where the story begins.
(Arctic Turning Point is hosted by The Climateverse in partnership with the Academy for Sustainable Innovation.)