by Domenico Vito
NFT infrastructure platform selected to support DigitalArt4Climate initiative that empowers artists and global youth with the tools required to engage in and monetize NFTs in the context of goals and programs of the United Nations.
NEW YORK – August 3, 2021 — Unique Network, a NFT chain expanding the capabilities for non-fungible tokens powered by proof-of-stake solution for Kusama and Polkadot, announced today that the United Nations’ accredited Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat) and International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches to Global Challenges (IAAI GLOCHA) have selected Unique network to be the lead tech partner for its latest initiative to help combat climate change, the #DigitalArt4Climate Initiative.
The initiative aims to empower young artists, designers, and activists worldwide to create art that can inspire people to take action against the climate crisis, while concurrently introducing them to NFTs, a technology that has the ability to liberate artists globally by allowing them to monetize their work in ways that have not been possible before. Unique Network will create and host DigitalArt4Climate marketplace that the artists and web designers participating in this initiative will utilize. The marketplace will be built on Unique Network’s ready to use suite of NFT solutions that are environment friendly
As part of its commitment to ramp up global efforts to mitigate climate change, the United Nations designated 2021 as the year of ‘Creative Economy for Sustainable Development’ to highlight the value of creativity as a uniquely powerful resource in implementing and achieving sustainable development goals. DigitalArt4Climate, in partnership with UN-Habitat, is an initiative aimed at accelerating the forces of creativity to empower robust climate action. Led by the IAAI GLOCHA, the DigitalArt4Climate initiative invites the world’s young artists to create art that will inspire people to act collectively in addressing the global climate crisis.
“To address the climate crisis, the United Nations understands the need to use any tool available to inspire people to commit to serious action on climate change,” says Miroslav Polzer, the founder and CEO of GLOCHA. “We believe that uniting digital innovations (IoT, data marketplaces, NFTs) with social innovations (new forms of multi-stakeholder cooperation) will lead to scalable and high participatory systems. We have found Unique Network’s innovative and flexible infrastructure to be the leading ready to use platform that will help us deliver high impact climate action. With this initiative we will drive the benefits of a society-wide mobilization of resources and people’s energies and desires to make a sustainable world happen.”
Unique Network has joined the DigitalArt4Climate Initiative to lead the technical implementation of the program, alongside partner organizations IAAI GLOCHA, the UN Habitat Youth Programme, Social Alpha Foundation Exquisite Workers, and Pallette 69. Social Alpha Foundation will provide mentorship sessions for artists and sponsor the winner awards. Exquisite Workers is the lead creative and content partner for the initiative while Pallette 69 is leading UX/UI mentorship for Designathon.
“We are excited to show that the ethos of distributed ledger technologies and open data can be used to support change agents to be more empowered in identifying climate actions they can make”, says Alexander Mitrovich, CEO of Unique Network. Unique Network is extremely proud to be collaborating with key United Nations associated initiatives, the global body for challenging paradigms and ensuring equitability, for a just transition. We believe that the future of human expression will be through clean and green NFTs, and we are dedicated to showing the whole world how it can unite our disparate communities in the fight to save our planet.”
The first component of this initiative was a Designathon, a design competition held in July that saw UX/UI designers compete to create the digital art gallery and marketplace that will showcase the second component of this initiative, DigitalArt4Climate Art Competition . Starting on International Youth Day, August 12, artists will be able to submit their work until September 9. At the end of the competition, the DigitalArt4Climate contest submissions will be put up for auction on the DigitalArt4Climate marketplace, where artists can monetize their creations. The advanced features of Unique Network will allow for building in flexible economic and revenue models for individual artists.
The DigitalArt4Climate Initiative’s work program was structured to complement the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP26), the annual global summit where nations meet to reach agreements on how to tackle climate change collectively, which takes place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.
As the climate crisis continues to escalate, it is imperative that the young people of the world are brought into the solution-making process. To this end, the United Nations has recognized that NFT technology has a unique ability to assist art in amplifying messages about climate action. Anybody who can access the internet can now create tokenized art allowing them to have a say and impact in the world.
About Unique Network
Unique Network is a foundation for the next generation of NFTs. The NFT chain for Kusama and Polkadot, it offers developers and creators independence from network-wide transaction fees and upgrades. The Unique Network team built Substrapunks, the first NFTs on Polkadot, won Hackusama in 2020, and created Substrate’s pallet for NFTs. Unique Network is launching in summer 2021.
About Global Challenges Action Network (GloCha)
The International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches to Global Challenges (GloCha) is a youth-focused United Nations-accredited civil society organization that is based in Klagenfurt am Wörtheersee, Austria. IAAI’s mission since 1999 has been to set up an ecosystem for the Global Challenges Action Network (GloCha), and a corresponding intellectual, technological and institutional infrastructure for societal engagement in the implementation of sustainable development goals for the environment.
About UN-Habitat Programme
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is the United Nations programme for human settlements and sustainable urban development. It was established in 1978 as an outcome of the first United Nations Conference on Human Settlements and Sustainable Urban Development held in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976. UN-Habitat operates in over 90 countries to promote transformative change in cities and human settlements through knowledge, policy advice, technical assistance, and collaborative action.
About Social Alpha Foundation
Social Alpha Foundation (SAF) is a non-profit organization that focuses on supporting blockchain education, outreach, and projects to empower communities utilizing blockchain technology for social good. Since its founding in 2018, SAF has funded and partnered with a number of organizations including the Blockchain Trust Accelerator, New America, United Nations Environment Program, Yale OpenLab, and The Bitfury Group. Most recently, SAF worked with Open Earth Foundation to organize the CarbonDrop, which organized an NFT art auction to raise USD6.6M for OEF..
