Poster's note: slightly mangled by copy paste https://www.academia.edu/13061010/Human_Intervention_in_the_Earth_s_Climate_The_Governance_of_Geoengineering_in_2025_
Geoengineering, or climate engineering, is the umbrella term for large-scale technological interventions into the climate system that seek to counter some of the effects of global warming. Due to limited progress in reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions thus far, geoengi-neering has been increasingly investigated as a potential addition to the portfolio of climate responses. At this point, however, the shape and role that geoengineering will take in the future remain highly uncertain. In this report, we look 10 years ahead, at the year 2025, and present two scenarios of geoengineering’s possible evolu-tion, with the goal of providing policy recom-mendations for its effective governance.Geoengineering technologies are generally divided into approaches that aim to reflect sunlight away from the earth (solar radiation management, SRM), and approaches that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (carbon dioxide removal, CDR). This report focuses on SRM interventions, and particularly on those methods that aim to reflect sunlight by injecting reflective particles into the strato-sphere.Such interventions raise important governance issues that are different from those raised by CDR techniques. This is because SRM would have a quick, global effect, could be deployed by a single actor or a small group of actors at a rela-tively low cost, and would have different impacts on different regions of the world. SRM is also likely to be perceived as a more fundamental intervention than CDR into the workings of the planet, with the potential for significant socie-tal conflict to result from different worldviews and value systems. Most CDR technologies, on the other hand, would act only over long time-scales, are prohibitively expensive at the moment and would require collaboration between many actors in order to have a significant effect on the climate.SRM has also generated various concerns. First, it has been argued that SRM would create a “moral hazard” by reducing the incentive for states to engage in mitigation and adaptation efforts, for SRM may prove to be faster, cheaper and less difficult to agree upon in international negotiations. Second, its potential impacts are highly uncertain. Factors that will be particu-larly difficult to predict and understand include regional and local impacts on agricultural production, water resources and biodiversity. Third, it has been questioned whether it is ethi-cally permissible to interfere with Earth-sys-tem processes at such a fundamental level. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 GLOBAL GOVERNANCE FUTURES 2025 The global governance of SRM will have to take these concerns into account. Although SRM is still in its infancy and may take decades to research, develop and deploy, it is precisely this early stage of development that offers a critical window of opportunity for developing collabo-rative and inclusive approaches to effective global governance of the potential SRM lifecy-cle, or parts thereof.We consider the above characteristics of SRM and the concerns it generates in two hypotheti-cal scenarios set in the year 2025:1. Mitigating for the Future?: The first scenario describes a world that achieves a binding agreement on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and yet experiences unilateral SRM testing in the absence of global SRM governance. 2. Geoengineering the Future?: The second scenario describes a world in which negotia-tions at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) fail to reach a binding global agreement on reducing emissions, leading involved parties to pay greater attention to SRM as a poten-tial means of reducing expected climate-change impacts, and to its governance. SCENARIO 1: MITIGATING FOR THE FUTURE? In this scenario, countries are in the process of implementing binding emissions reductions that had been agreed upon at the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in 2017. While the rate of global emissions is on a downward trend, the overall stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to cause climate-related natural disasters. Agreement on reducing emis-sions has lessened concerns about the possibil-ity of SRM creating a “moral hazard” by lowering the incentive for states to engage in mitigation and adaptation efforts; as a result, SRM research has been given a measure of legitimacy. With the onslaught of recent natural disasters, there is a renewed sense of urgency to pursue SRM research. At the same time, there is a lack of concerted effort to govern or collaborate on geoengineering. Therefore, some countries engage in unilateral research and testing of SRM approaches. These unilateral activities breed mistrust among countries when it comes to issues of SRM testing and deployment plans. SCENARIO 2: GEOENGINEERING THE FU TU RE? In this scenario, there is no global binding agreement on reducing greenhouse-gas emis-sions. The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) are vastly insufficient for keeping global warming below the 2°C threshold. With global greenhouse-gas emis-sions still rising, climate change continues to be perceived as one of the most serious and urgent threats to society and the economy. The increas-ing severity and frequency of climate-related natural disasters increase interest in SRM. Public funders and non-profit foundations support initial research on SRM, and commer-cial capital soon gets involved, with expecta-tions of financial returns from a new technology that the world desperately needs. A major inter-national research collaboration on SRM begins, which leads to a breakthrough in the technology and eventually to its deployment under a newly established global convention on geoengineer-ing, which is ratified by a majority of UN member states. Although the deployment is intended only to reduce the near-term impacts of climate change while the economy transi-tions to carbon-neutral production, critics point out that it is unlikely that deployment will be time-limited, given the heavy investment of private capital and a new economic sector emerging from the supplying of technological components to SRM. Scenarios EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 8 HUMAN INTERVENTION IN THE EARTH’S CLIMATE: THE GOVERNANCE OF GEOENGINEERING IN 2025+ We identified the following as crucial elements of the global governance of SRM: ›Inclusiveness; ›Transparency in decision-making; ›Promotion of research collaboration and con -sul tation; ›Prevention of large-scale testing and deploy-ment in the absence of a binding agreement on SRM.Our recommendations call for greater collabo-ration between science and policy communities. Scientists should embrace values such as trans-parency and inclusiveness, and build on the strong history of international cooperation in research. This can contribute significantly to effective and accountable international gover-nance.The policy recommendations presented in this report are based on these principles of SRM governance, with implications drawn from the specific scenarios. Our recommendations also have implications for the global governance of geoengineering more broadly, and focus on three areas: Publish an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on SRM. In the case that SRM research intensifies significantly, the IPCC should publish a comprehensive assess-ment of the latest results of SRM research to identify research priorities and possible ways forward, and to ensure that state-of-the-art scientific results are comprehen sively collected in a central, accessible do cu ment. Such reports may, depending on scientific progress, be published on a semi- regular basis. Form a UN advisory board on SRM. If SRM research gains momentum and proceeds signifi-cantly, an advisory board should be established under the auspices of the UN that discusses the socioeconomic context of, and ethical questions raised by, SRM, within the larger context of geoengineering, climate change and sustain-ability. The board should encompass a broad spectrum of expertise and backgrounds in the public, private and civil society sectors. Create a new negotiation track for geoengineering under the UNFCCC. Irrespective of the outcomes of the current UNFCCC negotiations, scientific and regulatory attention should be paid to SRM as a potential supplement to mitigation and adaptation efforts. According to our scenarios, one of the key opportunities for regulating SRM is to have a global body be held responsible for the governance of SRM and other geoengineer-ing techniques. The UNFCCC is currently the most suitable forum within which to create a new multi-stakeholder negotiation track, in coordination with other bodies that have already adopted the topic (for example, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the London Dumping Convention and its 1996 Proto-col). Policy Recommendations -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAJ3C-07R3BMz%2BuHL%2BfDcqqN7KQJTmWb1aNsJDOhz8TVm4Jxptw%40mail.gmail.com.
