Analyses of climate engineering (CE) governance have accelerated in the last decade. A key claim is that CE remains a largely ungoverned space, with shared norms, institutional arrangements, and formal rules to regulate CE not yet present. In contrast, here it is argued that de facto governance of CE is underway, discernible in an ordering of this nascent field of inquiry by unacknowledged sources of steering. One key source of de facto governance is analyzed: high-level 'authoritative assessments' of CE. The focus is on how these assessments are constructing CE as an object of governance through demarcating and categorizing this emerging field of inquiry, and how this contributes to normalizing and institutionalizing CE research (and CE research communities). Scrutinizing the distinct nature and political implications of de facto governance, particularly of novel and speculative technological trajectories not yet subject to formal steering, remains a key task for governance scholars.
Numerous recent studies project that 'climate engineering' technologies might need to play a major role in the future. Such technologies may carry major risks for developing countries that are often especially vulnerable to, and lack adaptive capacity to deal with, the impacts of such new technologies. In this situation, one would expect that developing countriesespecially the least developed countries that are most vulnerable-should play a central role in the emerging discourse on climate engineering. And yet, as this article shows in detail, the discussion about whether and how to engage with these technologies is shaped by experts from just a small set of countries in the Global North. Knowledge production around climate engineering remains heavily dominated by the major research institutions in North America and Europe. Drawing on information from 70 climate engineering events between 2009 and 2017 along with extensive document analysis, the article maps a lack of involvement of developing countries and highlights the degree to which their concerns remain insufficiently represented in politically significant scientific assessment reports. The article concludes by sketching options that developing countries may have to influence the agenda on climate engineering, reflecting on earlier attempts to increase control over novel technologies and influence global agenda setting.
How and why do institutional architectures, and the roles of private institutions therein, differ across separate areas of climate governance? Here, institutional complexity is explained in terms of the problem-structural characteristics of an issue area and the associated demand for, and supply of, private authority. These characteristics can help explain the degree of centrality of intergovernmental institutions, as well as the distribution of governance functions between these and private governance institutions. This framework is applied to three emerging areas of climate governance: reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) and climate engineering. Conflicts over means and values, as well as over relatively and absolutely assessed goods, lead to considerable variations in the emergence and roles of private institutions across these three cases.
Geoengineering technologies are by definition only effective at scale, and so international policy development of some sort will be unavoidable. It is therefore important to include governability as a dimension when assessing the technologies’ feasibility and potential role in addressing climate change. The few existing studies that address this question indicate that for some technologies, policy development at the international level could be exceedingly difficult. This study provides an in-depth, theoretically informed analysis of the obstacles that policymakers face when addressing geoengineering governance. Using data in the form of negotiation proceedings, observations, and interviews with government officials from seven different countries, it argues that a significant part of the challenge lies in dissonances between problem definitions that are widely used in the geoengineering governance debate and the structures and expectations that shape environmental policy making. These include a lack of institutional fit between the process-based differentiation of geoengineering technologies (carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management) and the international legal architecture, a lack of fit between the urgency of demanded governance action and prevalent scientific and political uncertainties, and a lack of fit between risk–risk trade-off narratives and the precautionary norms of environmental governance.
ESG-Agency research draws on diverse disciplinary perspectives with distinct clusters of scholars rooted in the fields of global environmental politics, policy studies, and socio-ecological systems.• Collectively, the chapters in Agency in Earth System Governance provide an accessible synthesis of some of the field's major questions and debates and a state-of-the-art understanding of how diverse actors engage with and exercise authority in environmental decision-making.
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