https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1075547019899408
Climate Engineering as a Communication Challenge: Contested Notions of Responsibility Across Expert Arenas of Science and Policy Nils Matzner1 and Daniel Barben1 Abstract Climate engineering (CE) is often said to bring about significant opportunities as well as risks. The pursuit of CE measures can be framed as either responsible or irresponsible, resulting in contentious and ambiguous communication. This article starts out from a notion of responsibility regarding subjects, objects, norms, and authorities. It will identify and analyze discursive patterns of responsibility across six expert arenas and provide a comparative mapping of these patterns. Better understanding controversy may help in finding common ground for designing research and policy strategies around CE. Taking on the challenges of communicating CE-related responsibilities would support CE governance. Keywords geoengineering, global warming, framing, discourse analysis, responsibility, governance Discussion and Conclusion We presented six patterns of responsibility that we had identified in CE dis- courses across six expert arenas: (A) humankind manages the planet, (B) the global north polluted the planet, (C) humankind has to mitigate its emissions, (D) scientists are responsible for research and research governance, (E) gov- ernments are responsible for research governance, and (F) international bodies should be responsible for deployment governance. Hereby, we could hardly detect conceptualizations that are characteristic for one particular arena. The analysis of the six patterns helps us understand CE-related responsi- bility issues, including wider implications to be discussed in the following three subsections. Vagueness, Diversity, and Polysemy of Responsibility Our analysis has shown that responsibility is an important reference in the CE discourse. However, patterns of responsibility are often implicit, vague, and diverse. One explanation for this is that responsibility is a “polysemic” concept (Pellé & Reber, 2013) with multiple but related meanings within a word field. It often occurs that some actors pick a particular meaning from the word field of responsibility to build an argument, while others refer to another meaning to formulate an opposite argument. One may argue that CE is either a responsible or an irresponsible response to climate change, due to its cooling effects, on the one hand, or its environmental risks, on the other (Barben, 2015, p. 208). Our results correspond to ambiguities found in CE reports that display a “mix of openness and attempts at bridging across posi- tions, with carefully drawn battle lines” (Markusson, 2013, p. 31). The debate over responsible research, development, and deployment of CE has not led to a common understanding yet. A broadly shared middle ground exists for strengthening mitigation policy, a cautious treatment of CE field experiments, a need for research governance, and refraining from early deployment of CE technologies. Apart from that, some actors push for more research and early development, while others would like to see CE under rigorous regulation, or even banned. We conclude—in line with Bellamy et al. (2013)—that a debate on which norms should be applied to climate change and in particular to CE research and policy has to be “opened up.” We identified normative positions, such as “planetary protection” or “democratic governance,” that are crucial for understanding what “responsible CE” may mean. As our research showed, discourse participants often neglect to declare on what normative grounds their assignments of responsibility are built. Responsibility and Governance of Climate Engineering Based on an in-depth reading of the documents, we found that compared with discussions on notions of responsibility, CE experts discuss issues of gover- nance in a much more nuanced manner. Calls for governing CE (e.g., “A char- ter for geoengineering,” 2012; Pasztor, 2017) are more vocal than those for responsible research and decision making (e.g., Hubert & Reichwein, 2015). Proposals for CE governance from social sciences (W. C. G. Burns & Nicholson, 2016), science commentaries (Caldeira & Keith, 2010), and policy advice (Royal Society, 2009) are numerous. Although some governance pro- posals are vague, they are often more focused than responsibility arguments. As our research has shown, three out of six responsibility patterns (D, E, F) directly relate to governance. Furthermore, planetary management (A), responsibility for historic emissions (B), and insufficient mitigation efforts (C) address some governance issues and shortcomings. Consequently, fram- ings of responsibility take place in a wider context of risk, uncertainty, and governance considerations. One reason for the vagueness and indeterminacy in the responsibility discourse could lie in the overshadowing significance of pressing governance issues—for example, the regulation of CE patenting or of transboundary effects. Responsibility claims are subsequently framed as governance issues. Patterns E and F also link these responsibility-to-gover- nance claims with a political type of responsibility, despite the fact that there is no elaborate de facto governance of CE in place (yet). Interestingly, Patterns E and F lack a correlation with moral responsibility, which means that there is no accounting for ethically irresponsible governance in the responsibility-to-governance claims. The sociologist Franz-Xaver Kaufmann (1992) recognized a “call for responsibility” where responsibility is used as a panacea. Such a call often indi- cates a lack of governance. Since the early modern period, philosophers of the state (e.g., Hobbes and Rousseau) recognized the need for directing actions where a government’s power ends. Contemporary governance theory (over- view in Offe, 2008) comes with a much broader and less top-down view on deliberation and decision making. However, responsibility is still of auxiliary value, especially where governance does not regulate human agency. From this point of view, the lack of a more nuanced debate about responsibility and CE is surprising. Developing further ideas of responsible research, development, public engagement, and possible deployment could help CE evolve with social consciousness, in a situation where appropriate governance is not yet in place. The dynamics, pervasiveness, and ambiguity of new and emerging sci- ence and technology motivated the establishment of various forms of TA, such as parliamentary TA, constructive TA (Rip et al., 1995), real-time TA and anticipatory governance (Barben et al., 2008), and responsible research and innovation (Owen et al., 2013). Taking on the challenges of communi- cating CE-related responsibilities would support these efforts. Future research on CE-related responsibility discourse may further clarify rela- tionships among changes in responsibility patterns, socio-technical con- figurations of CE research and governance, and in global and regional climate change impacts. -- 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]. 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