The Paris Agreement aims to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5° to 2°C above preindustrial temperature, but achieving this goal requires much higher levels of mitigation than currently planned. This challenge has focused greater attention on climate geoengineering approaches, which intentionally alter Earth's climate system, as part of an overall response starting with radical mitigation. Yet it remains unclear how to govern research on, and potential deployment of, geoengineering technologies.
Keeping global temperature rise to within 1.5–2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels is looking increasingly unlikely through mitigation alone. While increased adaptation to inevitable climate impacts will be necessary, a new realism is creeping into the climate debate. A growing number of scientists are proposing geoengineering technologies to deal with the expected shortfall, both through carbon dioxide removal and possibly through solar radiation management. But both approaches bring risks and pose significant governance challenges, and would likely affect different communities in different ways. As geoengineering moves mainstream, it is time to put governance at the heart of future discussion, and to broaden the debate from academia to governments, treaty bodies, faith groups, and civic organizations.The Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative is a major new effort to catalyze this conversation, bringing together players from a wide range of social, geographical, and professional backgrounds. It argues that policymakers need to take an ethical risk management approach, informed by continued research. How should transborder and transgenerational ethical issues be addressed? How will governance frameworks withstand geopolitical change? Can we build on existing international treaties and institutions, or do we need new ones? And most immediately, how should further research on solar engineering be governed—given current plans to start experiments in the stratosphere? In a geoengineered world, who controls the “global thermostat”?
Ban Ki‐moon, the UN Secretary‐General (SG) has been visibly engaged throughout the year on preparations for and during the Paris Conference, but his role in contributing to achieving this agreement has been little understood. The SG has no specific mandate to deal with climate change issues. Yet without his intensive engagement it would not have been possible to reach the agreement we had in Paris. The role played by the SG and its outcomes will be the focus of this paper. Particular attention will be paid to events in 2015, but the paper also looks at some earlier events during the entire mandate of this Secretary‐General, covering 2007–2016.
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