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Who Are the Engineers? Solar Geoengineering Research and Justice
Abstract
Solar geoengineering research is a small but growing field as concerns arise that reducing emissions will not be sufficient to limit severe climate impacts. With this increasing attention, ensuring that the field advances equitably and inclusively is of immense importance. This commentary is a response to arguments that advocate for abandoning solar geoengineering research altogether because it perpetuates colonialism and promotes injustice. We find, however, that this brand of argument is itself performatively colonial and recommend a more inclusive framework for solar geoengineering governance that integrates existing research on relevant structures.
... The fact that the effects of SRM would be transboundary and unequally distributed raises important ethical concerns about distributive justice and the governance of SRM (Macnaghten and Szerszynski 2013;Táíwò and Talati 2021). Notably, experts mostly agree that decisions around SRM should be taken multilaterally (Barrett 2014;Ghosh 2018;Morrow 2020) and include those countries and ethnic groups that might suffer disproportionately from SRM, particularly countries from the Global South (Carr and Yung 2018;Rahman et al. 2018;Táíwò and Talati 2021). ...
... The fact that the effects of SRM would be transboundary and unequally distributed raises important ethical concerns about distributive justice and the governance of SRM (Macnaghten and Szerszynski 2013;Táíwò and Talati 2021). Notably, experts mostly agree that decisions around SRM should be taken multilaterally (Barrett 2014;Ghosh 2018;Morrow 2020) and include those countries and ethnic groups that might suffer disproportionately from SRM, particularly countries from the Global South (Carr and Yung 2018;Rahman et al. 2018;Táíwò and Talati 2021). Further, to ensure that non-technical decisions around SRM are made in a democratic and socially responsible manner, and because public acceptance is one pre-condition for implementation, these decisions should consider not only the opinions of SRM experts but also of the public (Carr et al. 2013;Carr and Yung 2018;Wieners et al. 2023). ...
... These country and cluster variations might become more pronounced if SRM were to be developed further, people became more familiar with it and especially if an unequal distribution of the effects of SRM between countries became more evident. Future decisions about SRM should consider such variations (Barrett 2014;Ghosh 2018;Morrow 2020) and pay particular attention to the potentially varied opinions and concerns of different countries from the Global South (Carr and Yung 2018;Rahman et al. 2018;Táíwò and Talati 2021) and acknowledge potential variations between and within the 'WEIRD' and 'non-WEIRD' Global North. ...
Some argue that complementing climate change mitigation measures with solar radiation management (SRM) might prove a last resort to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. To make a socially responsible decision on whether to use SRM, it is important to consider also public opinion, across the globe and particularly in the Global South, which would face the greatest risks from both global warming and SRM. However, most research on public opinion about SRM stems from the Global North. We report findings from the first large-scale, cross-cultural study on the public opinion about SRM among the general public (N = 2,248) and students (N = 4,583) in 20 countries covering all inhabited continents, including five countries from the Global South and five ‘non-WEIRD’ (i.e. not Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic) countries from the Global North. As public awareness of SRM is usually low, we provided participants with information on SRM, including key arguments in favour of and against SRM that appear in the scientific debate. On average, acceptability of SRM was significantly higher in the Global South than in the ‘non-WEIRD’ Global North, while acceptability in the ‘WEIRD’ Global North was in between. However, we found substantial variation within these clusters, especially in the ‘non-WEIRD’ Global North, suggesting that countries do not form homogenous clusters and should thus be considered individually. Moreover, the average participants’ views, while generally neither strong nor polarised, differed from some expert views in important ways, including that participants perceived SRM as only slightly effective in limiting global warming. Still, our data suggests overall a conditional, reluctant acceptance. That is, while on average, people think SRM would have mostly negative consequences, they may still be willing to tolerate it as a potential last resort to fight global warming, particularly if they think SRM has only minor negative (or even positive) impacts on humans and nature.
... Why focus on the Global South? In order for SG governance to be both effective and inclusive, and as a requirement for justice more broadly, climate vulnerable communities and countries in the Global South, who are the populations that are most susceptible to climate impacts and thus have the most at stake in SG decision-making, must play leading roles in SG decisionmaking and other governance activities (Hourdequin, 2019;Táíwò and Talati, 2022). Capacity building efforts should focus on building and strengthening existing governance capacities in the Global South. ...
... A 2023 UNEP expert report similarly concludes that SG decisions "require an equitable, transparent, diverse and inclusive discussion" and that marginalized stakeholders from the Global South must be brought into a globally inclusive conversation (UNEP, 2023, p. 2). Principles related to good governance and justice also require that these communities are meaningfully engaged in SG governance and research (Carr et al., 2013;Hourdequin, 2019;Táíwò and Talati, 2022). The social and justice dimensions of sustainability transitions are often neglected, and yet attention toward them may be the key to ensuring human and environmental well-being (Iles, 2019). ...
Capacity building is needed to enable effective and inclusive governance of emerging climate intervention technologies. Here we use solar geoengineering (SG) as a case of an emerging climate intervention technology to highlight the importance of focusing attention on building capacity to govern these and similar technologies. We propose the concept of “governance capacity building” to help focus research and practice toward building and strengthening the knowledge, skills, tools, practices, or resources needed to govern SG. Centrally, we argue that “governance capacity building” is needed to enable multiple types of actors to contribute to all stages of the governance process, should be owned by recipients, and aimed toward building long term and durable forms of capacity. These capacity building efforts must center climate vulnerable communities and countries that stand to gain or lose the most from decisions about whether and how research and deployment of these technologies will move forward. To ensure governance capacity remains with these populations over the long term, governance capacity building should embrace a new model of capacity building envisioned primarily by actors in the Global South. We use these insights to demonstrate that gaps and limitations in how capacity building is understood in the SG governance literature and implemented in practice are stifling the potential for capacity building to enable effective and inclusive governance in the SG issue area. To help rectify this, we chart a path toward building successful governance capacity building programs for climate intervention technologies.
... Rather than closing down the discussion of Indigenous perceptions of climate change and climate technology, it seeks to open them up, and celebrate a diversity of viewpoints, in tandem with calls for more balanced research involving Indigenous peoples spanning many decades now (Liboiron and Cotter, 2023;Tschakert et al., 2023;Cochran et al., 2013;Berkes, 1999;Cajete, 1999;Ellen, 2000;Kimmerer, 2002). This holds true especially for solar geoengineering technologies, where rural populations and decision-makers have differing perspectives and a diversity and richness of views not often captured in existing research efforts (Sovacool, 2023;Taiwo and Talati, 2022;Delina, 2020;Winickoff et al., 2015). ...
... While such discourse aligns with the Southern conception of climate justice in its concerns for the procedural risks and injustices associated with SG, it is important to investigate the ways in which such discourses can also, against their interests for justice, reify existing power imbalances and preclude emancipatory pathways. Táíwò & Talati (2022) assert that "Global North domination of SG is not inevitable, and arguments that portray Northern dominance as inevitable can, paradoxically, help create the political reality that they warn us about" (p. 14). ...
Solar geoengineering (SG) has emerged within scientific research circles as a potential technological solution to address global climate change, with critical contestation arising from different disciplinary fields given concerns for inadequate governance, technical uncertainties, research inequities, and challenges for democracy. The development of SG research is dominated by a homogenous community of Western actors and the proliferation of uneven research raises concerns for critical climate justice given the exclusion of a plurality of interests, values, and norms in the formulation of the research landscape and the construction of SG as a socio-technological imaginary. While commitments to critically investigate the positionalities and subjectivities shaping the knowledge grow more numerous, less explicit investigations exist that expose the ways in which the current discourse normalizes climate imaginaries that belong to a singularly Western tradition of thought. This research seeks to expose the ways in which the current epistemic climate engineering community totalizes a Western imaginary and thus entrenches discursive and material forms of 'climate coloniality'. Using a decolonial analytical frame to construct and interpret a critical discourse analysis, I examine the most prominent (powerful) scientific literature on SG and its governance for the presence of narratives that institute climate coloniality. The findings reveal those dominant discourses within the field that totalize Western conceptions of climate change, earth, the role of science, the future, and humanity. By naming the genealogy of these discourses in Western modernity, the research challenges their universality that currently obscures colonial histories, reduces complexities, enables certain justifications, and reifies power imbalances. The research emphasizes the limitations of this investigation as situated and partial in its subjective and limited application of decolonial theoretical praxis, emphasizing the need for further research on climate coloniality that is critical of this research and its intended contributions.
... The selection of the 22 countries included in the study ( Fig. 1) was guided by the aim of achieving geographic spread and ensuring representation of "non-WEIRD" countries and regions which have so far been neglected in the literature (South America, the Middle East and Africa) as well as inclusion of some small island developing states, given salience of severe climate threats in these countries. In so doing we join calls for better inclusion of non-WEIRD countries made by scholars from various fields, including geography and political ecology, psychology, energy and climate social sciences (Henrich et al., 2010;Furszyfer Del Rio et al., 2023;Peñasco et al., 2021;Sovacool 2021) − calls which are increasingly also made for various climate-intervention technologies (Biermann and Möller 2019;Delina 2020;Táíwò and Talati 2021;Winickoff et al. 2015). ...
As emerging methods for carbon removal and controversial proposals around solar radiation modification are gaining traction in climate assessments and policy debates, a better understanding of how the public perceives these approaches is needed. Relying on qualitative data from 44 focus groups (n = 323 respondents), triangulated with a survey conducted in 22 countries (n = over 22 000 participants), we examine the role that climate change beliefs and attitudes towards climate action play in the formation of public perceptions of methods for carbon removal and solar radiation modification. We find that nationally varying degrees of perceived personal harm from climate change and climate worry predict support for these technologies. In addition to different perceptions of the problem, varying perceptions of the solution – i.e. the scope of climate action needed − shape publics’ assessment. Various tensions manifest themselves in publics’ reflections on the potential contribution of these climate technologies to climate action, including “buying time vs. delaying action”, “treating the symptoms vs. tackling the root causes”, and “urgency to act vs. effects only in the distant future”. We find that public perceptions are embedded in three broader narratives about transformation pathways, each reflecting varying notions of responsibility: (i) behavior change-centred pathways, (ii) top-down and industry-centred pathways, and (iii) technology-centred pathways. These results suggest that support for the deployment of the climate technologies studied hinges on them being tied to credible system-wide decarbonization efforts as well as their ability to effectively respond to a variety of perceived climate impacts.
... Firstly, a first wave of engagements emphasizing technical questions of affordability, effectiveness, safety, and timeliness as the basis for public preferences was criticized, and partially replaced, by a second wave emphasizing openended deliberation of socio-political concerns, grounding in the larger context of climate action, and 'uncoupling' from the perceived necessity of integration into policy 23 . Secondly, responding to calls to correct the endemic shortfall of global South representation in assessment 2,[24][25][26][27] , studies are increasingly expanding in that direction 12,17,[28][29][30] . Our assessment explicitly focuses on positions of the global South compared with the global North. ...
Solar geoengineering maintains a vocal presence as a stop-gap measure in assessments of climate and sustainability action. In this paper, we map prospective benefits and risks, and corresponding governance approaches, regarding three major proposals for solar geoengineering (stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening, and a space-based sunshield). We do so by engaging with 44 focus groups conducted in 22 countries split between the global North and South. We compare results against previous research on the public perceptions of solar geoengineering as well as wider activities in assessment, innovation, and decision-making. We find that global South groups exhibit greater hope but an arguably richer range of concerns for solar geoengineering, in the context of observable inequities in climate action and potential geopolitical conflict. Meanwhile, a strong, global preference for multilateral coordination and public engagement from the conduct of research onwards is offset by skepticism of effective multilateralism and public discourse.
... Both claims have been made, but with weak support. Claims of direct harm from research have relied on who is doing it but have violated their own standards on those dimensions (Stephens & Surprise, 2020;T aíwò & Talati, 2022). Claims that SG research or governance discussions might lock in subsequent deployment have not identified mechanisms for such lock-in (Cairns, 2014;McKinnon, 2019). ...
A prominent recent perspective article in this journal and accompanying open letter propose a broad international “non‐use agreement” (NUA) on activities related to solar geoengineering (SG). The NUA calls on governments to renounce large‐scale use of SG, and also to refuse to fund SG research, ban outdoor experiments, decline to grant IP rights, and reject discussions of SG in international organizations. We argue that such pre‐emptive rejection of public research and consultation would deprive future policy‐makers of knowledge and capability that would support informed decisions to safely and equitably limit climate risk, sustain human welfare, and protect threatened ecosystems. In contrast to the broad prohibitions of the NUA, we propose an alternative near‐term pathway with five elements: assess SG risks and benefits in the context of related climate risks and responses; distinguish the risks and governance needs of SG research and deployment; pursue research that treats uncertainties and divergent results even‐handedly; harness normalization of SG as a path to effective assessment and governance; and build a more globally inclusive conversation on SG and its governance. These principles would support a more informed, responsible, and inclusive approach to limiting climate risks, including judgments on the potential role or rejection of SG, than the prohibitory approach of the NUA.
This article is categorized under: Climate and Development > Social Justice and the Politics of Development
Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance
Policy and Governance > National Climate Change Policy
... Third, and most problematically, there has been very little engagement with actors in the Global South. This represents a severe flaw given that researchers and decision-makers in such regions will likely have divergent perspectives, use their own criteria to evaluate such technologiesnot to mention arguments it is the severe impacts confronting the Global South which impart greater urgency to solargeoengineering activities [21][22][23][24][25] . Also, little of the literature explicitly centers public perceptions in the Global South [16][17][18]20 , with just three countries (United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany) accounting for more than 60% of the times that a country features in the research 11 . ...
Novel, potentially radical climate intervention technologies like carbon dioxide removal and solar geoengineering are attracting attention as the adverse impacts of climate change are increasingly felt. The ability of publics, particularly in the Global South, to participate in discussions about research, policy, and deployment is restricted amidst a lack of familiarity and engagement. Drawing on a large-scale, cross-country exercise of nationally representative surveys (N = 30,284) in 30 countries and 19 languages, this article establishes the first global baseline of public perceptions of climate-intervention technologies. Here, we show that Global South publics are significantly more favorable about potential benefits and express greater support for climate-intervention technologies. The younger age and level of climate urgency and vulnerability of these publics emerge as key explanatory variables, particularly for solar geoengineering. Conversely, Global South publics express greater concern that climate-intervention technologies could undermine climate-mitigation efforts, and that solar geoengineering could promote an unequal distribution of risks between poor and rich countries.
... Nevertheless, the global community is still struggling to figure out how to accomplish these lofty goals as the impacts of climate change (CC) are still very evident (Ukhurebor et al., 2020(Ukhurebor et al., , 2022Ukhurebor and Aidonojie, 2021). Because the current level of mitigation efforts is deemed insufficient, some experts advocate for more extreme strategies such as climate engineering (CE), which refers to a broad category of direct manipulations in the global climate system to combat global warming (NRC, 2015a, b;UNEP, 2018;Aldy et al., 2021;Dai et al., 2021;Táíwò and Talati, 2021;Schubert, 2022). ...
... Nevertheless, the global community is still struggling to accomplish these lofty goals. Because the current level of mitigation effort is deemed insufficient, some experts advocate for more extreme strategies, such as climate engineering (CE) or solar geoengineering (SG), which refers to a broad category of direct manipulations in the global climate system to combat global warming (NRC 2015a, b;UNEP 2018;Aldy et al. 2021;Dai et al. 2021;Táíwò and Talati 2021;Schubert 2022). ...
The idea of climate engineering still remains elusive, particularly in several of those developing countries that are most affected by climate change. This knowledge gap can be addressed by knowing the perception of climate change and then introducing and getting feedback on its modification via climate engineering, from
the select group of developing countries. Building upon an earlier attempt to achieve these aims, a new group of three developing countries in the global South (Pakistan, Nigeria, and Kenya) is selected to examine their perspective via a total of more than 1000 responses. Descriptive and inferential results indicate that there are significant differences within the global South on awareness of global warming and climate engineering, as well as on the deployment of sulfate aerosols as a measure to delay the harshest effects of global warming.
... Some argue that solar geoengineering research is unethical and unjust because it is largely conducted by and advocated for by white men at elite northern institutions and would result in further entrenching existing power structures (Stephens and Surprise, 2020). Others argue that these voices of resistance are themselves making claims for climate-vulnerable people in the developing world, rather than seeking input directly from these communities about their thoughts about the future research of this technology (Táíwò and Talati, 2022). ...
... But even more so, they attack the legitimacy of great powers -or worse, the US as the world's current leader in solar geoengineering acting unilaterally -to speak for humanity absent new governance arrangements that confront "problematic structures that may currently exist in some institutions and regions" (Táíwò & Talati, 2022: 13). These debates are complex: some worry explicitly about increased "risks of militarisation or securitisation" (Stephens et al., 2021) while others worry more about incorporating relevant knowledge and voices, for example, from the global south, and more generally inclusive collective decision making (Táíwò & Talati, 2022). These are not debates "for" or "against" securitisation -those arguing for a plurality of voices assiduously avoid speaking securitisation or desecuritisation for others -but about the power dynamics often undertheorised in such moves. ...
... Nevertheless, the global community is still struggling to accomplish these lofty goals. Because the current level of mitigation effort is deemed insufficient, some experts advocate for more extreme strategies, such as climate engineering (CE) or solar geoengineering (SG), which refers to a broad category of direct manipulations in the global climate system to combat global warming (NRC 2015a, b;UNEP 2018;Aldy et al. 2021;Dai et al. 2021;Táíwò and Talati 2021;Schubert 2022). ...
... Most SG studies have simulated the outcomes of global-scale interventions to achieve a physical objective such as stabilization of global surface temperature 4,5 or precipitation 12, 13 . However, given the extensively documented governance challenges associated with 10 coordinated global climate risk management [8][9][10] , large-scale schemes may be sociopolitically unfeasible, raising the question of what would happen if SG were deployed for regional climate risk instead. Indeed, the Australian government has funded a cloud brightening experiment to understand its potential application to protect the Great Barrier Reef 14 . ...
Marine cloud brightening is a solar geoengineering1–3 proposal to cool atmospheric temperatures and reduce some impacts of climate change. To-date, modeling studies of solar geoengineering have primarily focused on large-scale schemes with objectives of stabilizing or mediating changes in global mean temperature4–7. However, these global proposals pose substantial governance challenges8–10, making regional interventions tailored toward targeted climate outcomes potentially more attractive in the near-term. In this study, we investigate the efficacy of regional marine cloud brightening in the North Pacific designed to mitigate extreme heat in the Western United States. We find cloud brightening in a remote mid-latitude region cools our target region more than brightening in a proximate subtropical region, but both schemes reduce the relative risk of dangerous summer heat exposure under present-day conditions, by 39% and 25% respectively. However, the same cloud brightening interventions under mid-century warming produce significantly hotter rather than cooler summers, both in the Western U.S. and other areas of the world. We trace this loss of efficacy to a nonlinear response of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to the combination of greenhouse gas driven warming and regional cloud brightening. Our result demonstrates a risk in assuming that regional interventions that are effective under certain conditions will remain effective as the climate continues to change.
... These findings will sit uneasily with many people, myself included. Indeed, many notable scholars are in favor of a qualified or even an outright ban on climate engineering research as well as a ban on deployment (see, e.g., McKinnon 2019 ; Biermann et al. 2022 , but see Olúfémi et al. 2022 ;McDonald 2022 ;Singer 2023 ). While a ban on research would make the use of such technology less likely, the research findings of this paper suggests that, in the absence of concerted action to bring down carbon emissions, such a move might well be immoral. ...
As the world continues to fail to reduce and control global surface temperatures, the use of solar radiation management (SRM) technology by one actor or by a small coalition of actors is becoming increasingly likely. Yet, most of the social scientific literature on solar geoengineering does not tend to systematically engage with this possibility; scholars focus either on global governance or on banning SRM usage and research altogether. On the margins of this debate, a handful of researchers have sought to bring insights from the just war tradition to the issue of unilateral and minilateral SRM usage. This article is concerned with the contribution just war/securitization theories can make to our understanding of the debate surrounding climate engineering. It scrutinizes and deepens existing attempts by just war scholars to examine the moral permissibility of unilateral and minilateral SRM usage, including from the perspective of Just Securitization Theory.
... At the same time, recognition must come from a place of respect and dignity if it is to account for justice in SAI decision-making (Hourdequin, 2019). In this vein, Olúfémi Táíwò and Shuchi Talati for example have cautioned that Western-based researchers, who call for a ban on SAI are themselves perpetuating colonial patterns by making choices on behalf of the global community (Táíwò & Talati, 2021). Similarly, the First Nations scholar and environmental ethicist Kyle Whyte points toward non-Indigenous environmentalists using Indigenous communities to argue for or against SAI research (Whyte & Buck, 2021). ...
... Participatory processes, as many in this book underline, are essential for advancing environmental justice. Táíwò and Talati (2022) emphasize this point too, making a case for the importance of meaningfully including voices from the Global South into governance structures for solar geoengineering technology. ...
Although escalating planetary turbulence threatens to destabilize political and economic systems, it also has the potential to inspire new ways to halt destructive practices and more toward more sustainable and just ways of governing world politics. This chapter presents a thematic summary of possible pathways for such a transformation. It begins by briefly exploring barriers to effective governance through turbulence, such as the tendency for path dependency to keep ineffective institutions intact, before turning to consider ways to improve global governance during times of extreme turbulence. Effective governance, the chapter suggests, features decisionmakers who accept uncertainty, think holistically, and facilitate participatory policymaking; it further necessitates justice-oriented and flexible institutions enabling creative experimentation and minimizing unintended consequences. The chapter emphasizes, too, the value of reflexive practice to help reveal failures and uncover alternatives, as well as the importance of transnational civil society mobilization for facilitating a transition to effective governance and a broader systemic transformation of the world order.
... Rejecting SRM research does not necessarily prevent future undemocratic or unilateral decision-making on SRM. In fact, given the current unequal distribution of SRM knowledge, rejecting further research now might mostly be a decision of privileged actors who currently have the capacity to engage in (or oppose) SRM research (21), and would thus be an undemocratic act in itself. Transparent research, outreach and capacity building, especially in vulnerable developing countries (6), can empower citizens and underrepresented regions to take part in the debate and preempt rogue actors from monopolising SRM knowledge (19). ...
As it is increasingly uncertain whether humanity can limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) has been suggested as a potential temporary complement to mitigation. While no replacement for mitigation, evidence to date suggests that some SRM methods could contribute to reducing climate risks and would be technically feasible. But such interventions would also pose environmental risks and unprecedented governance challenges. The risks of SRM must be carefully weighed against those of climate change without SRM. Currently, both types of risks are not sufficiently understood to assess whether SRM could be largely beneficial. Given the already serious impacts of climate change and the possibility that pressure from their increasing severity will trigger rash decisions, we argue that timely, careful investigation and deliberation on SRM is a safer path than wilful ignorance. A framework of ethical guidelines and regulation can help limit potential risks from SRM research.
... Thus, students, scholars, and activists argue that decarbonization and other forms of climate action must be accompanied by decolonization, with both material and epistemic implications (McGregor et al., 2020). For instance, they call for proposed climate solutions to be led by communities most directly and negatively affected by climate change (4 Rs Youth Movement & Youth Climate Lab, 2022; Whyte, 2018;Táíwò & Talati, 2022). They also advocate for the Global North to accept responsibility for its outsized greenhouse gas emissions (both historically and today) and its colonization of the atmosphere by both reducing its own consumption and enacting climate reparations by transforming existing geopolitical and economic structures and offering material restitution for the lands, labor, and resources stolen through colonialism and slavery. ...
This article reflects on recent calls for universities to deepen their commitments to sustainability in the face of climate change. It suggests that because climate change is a “wicked problem” that is hyper-complex, lacks clear solutions, and affects multiple communities in different ways, universities are unlikely to achieve consensus around a single approach to sustainability. The article reviews emerging critiques of existing university sustainability efforts, including critiques of greenwashing, climate colonialism, and (techno)solutionism. It also offers a social cartography of three different approaches to sustainability: mainstream sustainability, critical sustainability, and beyond sustainability. Rather than advocate for one particular approach, the article suggests that if universities are to maintain their relevance in the context of wicked problems like climate change, they will need to foster spaces for critically informed, complexity-based, and socially and ecologically accountable conversations about the role of higher education institutions in pluralizing possible futures on a shared, living planet.
... Others call for the same practices, but with the aim of open-ended, critical assessment that caters more towards publics and marginalized voices than towards strategic policy-making (Tables 3 and 4, see also McLaren and Corry, 2021;Low and Buck, 2020). Most are agreed on the need to involve researchers, decision-makers, and publics from the global South (Rahman et al., 2018;Biermann et al., 2022b;Táíwò and Talati, 2020). The battle here is not on whether the shape and scope of assessment needs to be widened, but on whether the intent of Table 5 Contrasting anticipatory assessments in carbon removal and solar geoengineering. ...
In global climate governance, anticipatory assessments map future options and pathways, in light of prospective risks and uncertainties, to inform present-day planning. Using data from 125 interviews, we ask: How are foundational experts contesting the conduct of anticipatory assessment of carbon removal and solar geoengineering – as two emerging but controversial strategies for engaging with climate change and achieving Net Zero targets? We find that efforts at carbon removal and solar geoengineering assessment leverage and challenge systems modeling that has become dominant in mapping and communicating future climate impacts and mitigation strategies via IPCC reports. Both suites of climate intervention have become stress-tests for the capacity of modeling to assess socio-technical strategies with complex, systemic dimensions. Meanwhile, exploring societal dimensions demands new modes of disciplinary expertise, qualitative and deliberative practices, and stakeholder inclusion that modelling processes struggle to incorporate. Finally, we discuss how the patterns of expert contestation identified in our results speak to multiple fault-lines within ongoing debates on reforming global environmental assessments, and highlights key open questions to be addressed.
... It has implications for research and policy right now. Táíwò and Talati caution that "Global North domination of SG is not inevitable, and arguments that portray Northern dominance as inevitable can, paradoxically, help create the political reality that they warn us about" (Táíwò and Talati, 2021). Similarly, if public institutions back away from research, e.g., because of perceptions that solar geoengineering is inevitably a threat, we risk moving research into military spheres where it may in fact be more securitized. ...
Solar geoengineering, or reflecting incoming sunlight to cool the planet, has been viewed by international relations and governance scholars as an approach that could exacerbate conflict. It has not been examined through the framework of environmental peacebuilding, which examines how and when environmental challenges can lead to cooperation rather than conflict. This article argues that scholars should treat the link between solar geoengineering and conflict as a hypothesis rather than a given, and evenly examine both hypotheses: that solar geoengineering could lead to conflict, and that it could lead to peace. The article examines scenarios in which geoengineering may lead to negative peace—peace defined as the absence of conflict—and then applies a theoretical framework developed by environmental peacebuilding scholars to look at how solar geoengineering could relate to three trajectories of environmental peacebuilding. A peace lens for solar geoengineering matters for research and policy right now, because focusing narrowly on conflict in both research and policy might miss opportunities to understand and further scenarios for environmental peacebuilding. The paper concludes with suggestions for how research program managers, funders, and policymakers could incorporate environmental peacebuilding aims into their work.
Marine cloud brightening (MCB) is a geoengineering proposal to cool atmospheric temperatures and reduce climate change impacts. As large-scale approaches to stabilize global mean temperatures pose governance challenges, regional interventions may be more attractive near term. Here we investigate the efficacy of regional MCB in the North Pacific to mitigate extreme heat in the Western United States. Under present-day conditions, we find MCB in the remote mid-latitudes or proximate subtropics reduces the relative risk of dangerous summer heat exposure by 55% and 16%, respectively. However, the same interventions under mid-century warming minimally reduce or even increase heat stress in the Western United States and across the world. This loss of efficacy may arise from a state-dependent response of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to both anthropogenic warming and regional MCB. Our result demonstrates a risk in assuming that interventions effective under certain conditions will remain effective as the climate continues to change.
As disruptions from climate change increase, so will the urgency to find shorter-term approaches to ameliorating its harms. This may include calls to implement solar geoengineering, an approach to cooling the planet by reflecting incoming sunlight back to space. While the exact effects of solar geoengineering are still highly uncertain, physical science to date suggests that it may be effective at reducing many aspects of climate change in the short term. One of the biggest concerns about solar geoengineering is the extent to which it may interfere with crucial emissions reductions policies, i.e. mitigation. There are multiple channels by which geoengineering could alter mitigation pathways, both financial and behavioural. Here we define three such linkages and present the evidence available to constrain their potential magnitudes. Because solar geoengineering is not a substitute for mitigation, policies to develop or implement technologies that could be used to carry it out should be designed to accentuate its complementary nature to mitigation and deter the possibility it is used to delay decarbonizing the economy.
The avoidance of hitting tipping points is often considered a key benefit of Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) techniques, however, the physical science underpinning this has thus far not been comprehensively assessed. This review assesses the available evidence for the interaction of SRM with a number of earth system tipping elements in the cryosphere, the oceans, the atmosphere and the biosphere , with a particular focus on the impact of SAI. We review the scant available literature directly addressing the interaction of SRM with the tipping elements or for closely related proxies to these elements. However, given how limited this evidence is, we also identify and describe the drivers of the tipping elements, and then assess the available evidence for the impact of SRM on these. We then briefly assess whether SRM could halt or reverse tipping once feedbacks have been initiated. Finally, we suggest pathways for further research. We find that SRM mostly reduces the risk of hitting tipping points relative to same emission pathway scenarios without SRM, although this conclusion is not clear for every tipping element, and large uncertainties remain.
Institutional theory, behavioral science, sociology and even political science all emphasize the importance of actors in achieving social change. Despite this salience, the actors involved in researching, promoting, or deploying negative emissions and solar geoengineering technologies remain underexplored within the literature. In this study, based on a rigorous sample of semi-structured expert interviews (N = 125), we empirically explore the types of actors and groups associated with both negative emissions and solar geoengineering research and deployment. We investigate emergent knowledge networks and patterns of involvement across space and scale. We examine actors in terms of their support of, opposition to, or ambiguity regarding both types of climate interventions. We reveal incipient and perhaps unforeseen collections of actors; determine which sorts of actors are associated with different technology pathways to comprehend the locations of actor groups and potential patterns of elitism; and assess relative degrees of social acceptance, legitimacy, and governance. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Esta traducción del “Capítulo 14: Cooperación internacional de la contribución del Grupo de Trabajo III al Sexto Informe de Evaluación del IPCC” no es una traducción oficial del IPCC. Ha sido realizada por profesores y alumnos de la Maestría en Derecho y Economía del Cambio Climático de FLACSO Argentina con el objetivo de reflejar de la manera más precisa el lenguaje utilizado en el texto original.
Citar como: Patt, A., L. Rajamani, P. Bhandari, A. Ivanova Boncheva, A. Caparrós, K. Djemouai, I. Kubota, J. Peel, A.P. Sari, D.F. Sprinz, J. Wettestad, 2022: Cooperación internacional. En IPCC, 2022: Cambio Climático 2022: Mitigación del Cambio Climático. Contribución del Grupo de Trabajo III al Sexto Informe de Evaluación del Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Reino Unido y Nueva York, NY, Estados Unidos. (Traducido por FLACSO Argentina) (2022).
Recently, research into the possibilities of developing Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and other geoengineering technologies has gained new momentum. Just this year, Cambridge University announced the opening of a “Centre for Climate Repair” as part of the university’s Carbon Neutral Futures Initiative. Recent modeling work gives hope that SRM could confer more benefits than previously thought. But opposition to even conducting research into SRM remains strong. I use the case study of SRM to develop a framework, based on a theorem by I.J. Good, for thinking about the benefits and costs of acquiring new evidence and for thinking about the conditions under which new evidence could be harmful. I argue that the expected benefits of supporting public research in SRM technologies outweigh the expected costs and harms.
Research into solar geoengineering, far from being societally neutral, is already highly intertwined with its emerging politics. This review outlines ways in which research conditions or constructs solar geoengineering in diverse ways, including the forms of possible material technologies of solar geoengineering; the criteria and targets for their assessment; the scenarios in which they might be deployed; the publics which may support or oppose them; their political implications for other climate responses, and the international relations, governance mechanisms, and configurations of power that are presumed in order to regulate them. The review also examines proposals for governance of research, including suggested frameworks, principles, procedures, and institutions. It critically assesses these proposals, revealing their limitations given the context of the conditioning effects of current research. The review particularly highlights problems of the reproduction of Northern norms, instrumental approaches to public engagement, a weak embrace of precaution, and a persistent—but questionable—separation of research from deployment. It details complexities inherent in effective research governance which contribute to making the pursuit of solar geoengineering risky, controversial, and ethically contentious. In conclusion, it suggests a case for an explicit, reflexive research governance regime developed with international participation. It suggests that such a regime should encompass modeling and social science, as well as field experimentation, and must address not only technical and environmental, but also the emergent social and political, implications of research.
This article is categorized under: Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice
Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance
Geoengineering has generally been a research province of the Global North. Developing countries, especially climate-vulnerable regions such as Southeast Asia, have made few contributions to a critical understanding of geoengineering. To deliver more climate action, we need to amplify Global South voices in this debate. This essay summarizes the deliberations of a workshop that sought to build an inter- and multi-disciplinary knowledge community on the critical study of geoengineering in Southeast Asia. Held in Indonesia, this workshop involved discussions among 17 social science researchers, climate modelers, environmental policy analysts, and civil society actors from the region. On the basis of in-depth discussions, research themes were developed to help guide future geoengineering research in Southeast Asia. These themes included: biochar techniques for carbon capture and storage; expansive modeling of regional impacts of stratospheric aerosol injection, especially for transboundary water bodies; national and regional governance implications of carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management; and critical social study of these technologies. The workshop participants called for support for regional research on geoengineering through new funding opportunities and increased international collaboration.
Advancing solar geoengineering research is associated with multiple hidden injustices that are revealed by addressing three questions: Who is conducting and funding solar geoengineering research? How do those advocating for solar geoengineering research think about social justice and social change? How is this technology likely to be deployed? Navigating these questions reveals that solar geoengineering research is being advocated for by a small group of primarily white men at elite institutions in the Global North, funded largely by billionaires or their philanthropic arms, who are increasingly adopting militarized approaches and logics. Solar geoengineering research advances an extreme, expert–elite technocratic intervention into the global climate system that would serve to further concentrate contemporary forms of political and economic power. For these reasons, we argue that it is unethical and unjust to advance solar geoengineering research.
The nations that are most vulnerable to climate change must drive discussions of modelling, ethics and governance, argue A. Atiq Rahman, Paulo Artaxo, Asfawossen Asrat, Andy Parker and 8 co-signatories.
In this special issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation, multiple faces of Participatory Budgeting programs are revealed. The articles demonstrate that there is no standardized set of “best practices” that governments are adopting, but there are a broader set of principles that are adapted by local governments to meet local circumstances. Adopt and adapt appears to be the logic behind many PB programs.
Because of its popularity, there is now a large literature examining how participatory budgeting (PB) deepens participation by the poor and redistributes resources. Closer examinations of recent cases of PB can help us to better understand the political configurations in which these new participatory democratic spaces are embedded, and articulate the conditions that might lead to more meaningful outcomes. Who participates? For whose benefit? The articles in this symposium, on participatory budgeting in New York City (PBNYC), highlight both strengths and challenges of the largest American PB process. They focus less on redistribution, more on the dimensions of the process itself and of PBNYC’s successful social inclusion, new dynamics between participants and local politicians, and the subtleties of institutionalization. The symposium also reminds us, however, that contestations over meaningful participation are on-going, and that of all of PBNYC’s multiple goals, equity has proven to be the most elusive.
This essay argues for and illustrates the theoretical and conceptual contributions of Indigeneity regarding the discourse of climate change within the United Nations. The decolonial process of naming/labeling issues and evidencing cultural impact, as Indigeneity promotes, is my primary focus. For example, climate colonialism—rather than merely noting climate change—is named, illustrated, and evidenced. It is through these vital conceptual understandings and epistemological performances that Indigeneity critiques the United Nations process, the allowance-hindrance of voice (sovereignty,) and illustrates contradictory climate change priorities. My research utilizes the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and data-observations collected from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings held in Copenhagen (COP15).
The Global South is relatively under-represented in public deliberations about solar radiation management (SRM), a controversial climate engineering concept. This Perspective analyses the outputs of a deliberative exercise about SRM, which took place at the University of California-Berkeley and involved 45 mid-career environmental leaders, 39 of whom were from the Global South. This analysis identifies and discusses four themes from the Berkeley workshop that might inform research and governance in this arena: (1) the 'moral hazard' problem should be reframed to emphasize 'moral responsibility'; (2) climate models of SRM deployment may not be credible as primary inputs to policy because they cannot sufficiently address local concerns such as access to water; (3) small outdoor experiments require some form of international public accountability; and (4) inclusion of actors from the Global South will strengthen both SRM research and governance.
When Goebbels, the brain behind Nazi propaganda, heard culture being discussed, he brought out his revolver. That shows that the Nazis, who were and are the most tragic expression of imperialism and of its thirst for domination--even if they were all degenerates like Hitler, had a clear idea of the value of culture as a factor of resistance to foreign domination. History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, it is very easy for the foreigner to impose his domination on a people. But it also teaches us that, whatever may be the material aspects of this domination, it can be maintained only by the permanent, organized repression of the cultural life of the people concerned. Implantation of foreign domination can be assured definitively only by physical liquidation of a significant part of the dominated population. In fact, to take up arms to dominate a people is, above all, to take up arms to destroy, or at least to neutralize, to paralyze, its cultural life. For, with a strong indigenous cultural life, foreign domination cannot be sure of its perpetuation. At any moment, depending on internal and external factors determining the evolution of the society in question, cultural resistance (indestructible) may take on new forms (political, economic, armed) in order fully to contest foreign domination.
It is widely accepted that electoral representative democracy is better — along a number of different normative dimensions — than any other alternative lawmaking political arrangement. It is not typically seen as much of a competition: it is also widely accepted that the only legitimate alternative to electoral representative democracy is some form of direct democracy, but direct democracy — we are told — would lead to bad policy. This article makes the case that there is a legitimate alternative system — one that uses lotteries, not elections, to select political officials — that would be better than electoral representative democracy. Part I diagnoses two significant failings of modern-day systems of electoral representative government: the failure of responsiveness and the failure of good governance. The argument offered suggests that these flaws run deep, so that even significant and politically unlikely reforms with respect to campaign finance and election law would make little difference. Although my distillation of the argument is novel, the basic themes will likely be familiar. I anticipate the initial response to the argument may be familiar as well: the Churchillian shrug. Parts II, III, and IV of this article represent the beginning of an effort to move past that response, to think about alternative political systems that might avoid some of the problems with the electoral representative system without introducing new and worse problems. In the second and third parts of the article, I outline an alternative political system, the lottocratic system, and present some of the virtues of such a system. In the fourth part of the article, I consider some possible problems for the system. The overall aims of this article are to raise worries for electoral systems of government, to present the lottocratic system and to defend the view that this system might be a normatively attractive alternative, removing a significant hurdle to taking a non-electoral system of government seriously as a possible improvement to electoral democracy.
Preparing for Climate Intervention Decision Making in the Global South: A Role for Canada and India
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Immediate Stop to Climate Geoengineering: Demand by 110 Civil Society Organizations and Popular Movements
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The Big Bad Fix: The Case Against Climate Engineering
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Why a Landmark Experiment into Dimming the Sun Got Canceled
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A New Horizon for Governance? Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment (blog)
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Strengthening Public Input on Solar Geoengineering Research: What's Needed for Decisionmaking on Atmospheric Experiments
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Geoengineering and Imperialism
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The Right to Be Free of Fear: Indigeneity and the United Nations
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