https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00108367241269629

*Authors*
Nikolaj Kornbech, Olaf Corry, and Duncan McLaren

https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367241269629

*18 August 2024*

*Abstract*
The Arctic has been identified by scientists as a relatively promising
venue for controversial ‘solar geoengineering’ – technical schemes to
reflect more sunlight to counteract global warming. Yet contemporary
regional security dynamics and the relative (in)significance of climate
concerns among the key Arctic states suggest a different conclusion. By
systematically juxtaposing recently published schemes for Arctic
geoengineering with Arctic security strategies published by the littoral
Arctic states and China, we reveal and detail two conflicting security
imaginaries. Geoengineering schemes scientifically securitise (and seek to
maintain) the Arctic’s ‘great white shield’ to protect ‘global’ humanity
against climate tipping points and invoke a past era of Arctic
‘exceptionality’ to suggest greater political feasibility for research
interventions here. Meanwhile, state security imaginaries understand the
contemporary Arctic as an increasingly contested region of considerable
geopolitical peril and economic opportunity as temperatures rise. Alongside
the entangled history of science with geopolitics in the region, this
suggests that geoengineering schemes in the Arctic are unlikely to follow
scientific visions, and unless co-opted into competitive, extractivist
state security imaginaries, may prove entirely infeasible. Moreover, if the
Arctic is the ‘best-case’ for geoengineering politics, this places a huge
question mark over the feasibility of other, more global prospects.

*Source: Sage Journals*

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