https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/articles/global-commons-and-environment/early-view-article-clash-geofutures-and-remaking-planetary
Early View Article - Clash of Geofutures and the Remaking of Planetary
Order: Faultlines underlying Conflicts over Geoengineering Governance
Clash of Geofutures and the Remaking of Planetary Order: Faultlines
underlying Conflicts over Geoengineering Governance
Author
Duncan McLaren and Olaf Corry
Climate engineering (geoengineering) is rising up the global policy agenda,
partly because international divisions pose deep challenges to collective
climate mitigation. However, geoengineering is similarly subject to
clashing interests, knowledge‐traditions and geopolitics. Modelling and
technical assessments of geoengineering are facilitated by assumptions of a
single global planner (or some as yet unspecified rational governance), but
the practicality of international governance remains mostly speculative.
Using evidence gathered from state delegates, climate activists and
modellers, we reveal three underlying and clashing ‘geofutures’: an
idealised understanding of governable geoengineering that abstracts from
technical and political realities; a situated understanding of
geoengineering emphasising power hierarchies in world order; and a
pragmatist precautionary understanding emerging in spaces of negotiation
such as UN Environment Assembly (UNEA). Set in the wider historical context
of climate politics, the failure to agree even to a study of geoengineering
at UNEA indicates underlying obstacles to global rules and institutions for
geoengineering posed by divergent interests and underlying epistemic and
political differences. Technology assessments should recognise that
geoengineering will not be exempt from international fractures; that
deployment of geoengineering through imposition is a serious risk; and that
contestations over geofutures pertain, not only to climate policy, but also
the future of planetary order.
Policy Implications
Assessments of the feasibility and desirability of geoengineering
technologies should never be based solely on knowledge produced under
idealised conditions, (e.g. climate modelling or integrated climate and
economic modelling).
Assessments of technologies with global implications should factor in risks
and complications generated by the international fragmentation of world
politics and histories.
Institutional designs for governing geoengineering should incorporate
diverse and situated forms of knowledge as well as involve broad
participation.
Though they sometimes should be treated separately, an overarching
governance framework for both CDR and solar radiation management (SRM) is
needed to avoid deterrence of mitigation ('moral hazard').
A governance process for geoengineering technologies, separate from climate
governance, should be established at the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP).
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