CHILLEPLASSEN / CHILLPLAZA

2222
Photograph by Katarina Caspersen

By 2222, Oslo’s city center is completely submerged due to the change in global sea level. Only the hills around the city still rise from the waves. The citizens have adapted to a life underwater but not everyone can afford living there. Most of the public resources are spent maintaining the high-tech underwater city, while make-shift shanty towns sprawl out on the hill tops. The city center on the bottom of the Oslofjord is called Chillplaza, a place where people live, work and play. While efforts are made to make underwater life similar to what people knew in the 21st century, there are some notable differences. The economy is circular, energy production comes predominantly from waste, and pills fulfil nutritional needs.

Photograph by Katarina Caspersen

The process of CHILL PLAZA

Photograph by Katarina Caspersen

Challenge questions

by CoFutures

To be future ready, the world needs to create good policies to deal with the increasing number of climate refugees. While some predict that the overall effect of climate change will lead to positive effects for Norway, including longer growing season, on the ground reality is already showing a different story, with increasing rainfall and problems with soil erosion. But even if its effects were positive, then Norway must also ready itself to receive more climate refugees from other nations in Europe and elsewhere. While millions are already displaced annually, both nationally and  internationally, due to ecological disasters and their consequences, by 2050 the numbers might reach more than a billion according to some projections. A majority of these populations belong to poorer nations, who have contributed the least to the environmental disasters we face now, and who are facing the consequences of actions taken by richer, industrialized nations. Rapid  desertification has led to catastrophic losses in arable land and GMO monocultures have affected future food security for billions, while sea-level rises mean that without active intervention, entire nations and regions will be underwater in the near future. Chilleplassen is set in such a climate distressed world, where the rich live underwater, while the poorer populations live overground. What do you think needs to be done to change this future? How do you think Norway would adapt if a million climate change refugees needed to be taken in? How would you adapt if you had to flee your own country due to climate change?

©CoFUTURES, 2020