What is it about?
Schemes to remove gigatons of carbon dioxide from the air, or to reduce incoming sunlight to the planet to cool the Earth are gathering interest, but negotiations about governing technologies that might do this is tricky. This is not just because the science is at an early stage, but because people disagree what amounts to useful knowledge, what kind of world geoengineering would happen in, and how it would affect the rest of climate politics (including reducing emissions), and which actors would be put in control of it.
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Why is it important?
As the world heats up more desperate and speculative measures are being considered, but the global politics of this area could pose serious problems for the feasibility of geoengineering. This study explains what the underlying causes of disagreement and conflict drawing on observations and interviews at the first UN negotiations on governing geoengineering at the United Nations Environment Assembly 4 in 2019.
Perspectives
The international governance that is presupposed or imagined when methods like solar radiation modification and carbon dioxide removal are put forward as possible solutions to the climate crisis is not based on historical or analytical evidence. Much less ideal realities in the form of a 'clash of geofutures' - clashing values, ideas, histories, cultures, knowledges, interests and empires - will make for a more typical international outcome through unequal relations. If it is ever done it will therefore most likely not be a consensual global governance scenario but a partially imposed effort, in the service of (and underpinned by) powerful global actors and alliances.
Professor Olaf Corry
University of Leeds
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Clash of Geofutures and the Remaking of Planetary Order: Faultlines underlying Conflicts over Geoengineering Governance, Global Policy, January 2021, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/1758-5899.12863.
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