What happens when climate modelling experiments simulate geoengineering to refreeze the Arctic?

What is it about?

This chapter looks at how worries about the unravelling of Arctic ecosystems as a result of global warming, and speculative methods of possibly refreezing the region by putting substances in the sky reflecting more sunlight into space - 'solar geoengineering' - combine to making 'The Arctic' recognised as a thing that countries might - and even should - govern. Geoengineering the Arctic is motivated by well-founded ecological concerns, but scientists and campaigners use models and discourse that also ignore the local realities of indigenous populations and great power politics. This helps create a global imaginary of the Arctic as an discrete ecosystem that can easily be technically manipulated by others to have more ice. Yet the Arctic it is a region with a (colonial) history, multiple claims and embedded interests attached to it. Glossing over this ignores how politically hard it would be to artificially lower temperatures and repair sea ice. In general it is often assumed in International Relations that the objects of politics and governance are self-evident and that science is politically neutral. However, considerable political work goes into marking out which bits of reality can legitimately be steered and operated on - 'governance-objects'. E.g. until the 18th Century, the idea that a 'population' should be governed, improved in terms of health etc. did not exist. When it was produced by census material and state policy, this legitimated a huge extension of state power. Today the climate is becoming a 'governance-object', and the politics of that are important, also to the Arctic.

Featured Image

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This chapter builds on and contributes to a growing argument that the objects of politics are almost as important as the subjects - i.e. we cannot just focus on the actors, states, non-state actors (which are the usual focus of international relations) and understand what is going on. The Arctic is an increasingly important global space, as well as a local space, and 'solar geoengineering' is an example of how politics happens not just in foreign policy institutions but in the laboratory. How the Arctic is 'made' via knowledge practices, science and policy-discourse, into a supposedly governable entity, is not just innocent scientific research, but part of a global political process.

Perspectives