Solar geoengineering to reduce climate change: a review of governance proposals

Abstract

Although solar geoengineering (alternatively ‘solar radiation management’ or ‘solar radiation modification’) appears to offer a potentially effective, inexpensive and technologically feasible additional response to climate change, it would pose serious physical risks and social challenges. Governance of its research, development and deployment is thus salient. This article reviews proposals for governing solar geoengineering. Its research may warrant dedicated governance to facilitate effectiveness and to reduce direct and socially mediated risks. Because states are not substantially engaging with solar geoengineering, non-state actors can play important governance roles. Although the concern that solar geoengineering would harmfully lessen abatement of greenhouse gas emissions is widespread, what can be done to reduce such displacement remains unclear. A moratorium on outdoor activities that would surpass certain scales is often endorsed, but an effective one would require resolving some critical, difficult details. In the long term, how to legitimately make decisions regarding whether, when and how solar geoengineering would be used is central, and suggestions how to do so diverge. Most proposals to govern commercial actors, who could provide goods and services for solar geoengineering, focus on intellectual property policy. Compensation for possible harm from outdoor activities could be through liability or a compensation fund. The review closes with suggested lines of future inquiry.

Human Rights and Precautionary Principle: Limits to Geoengineering, SRM, and IPCC Scenarios

“…In any case, SRM options attract a lot of interest, since they bear the promise to stop or at least delay global warming faster than, e.g., AR or the restoration of degraded forest and wetland ecosystems, with projected effects in the span of a century [1,65]. SRM strategies are supposed to "effectively, globally, rapidly, reversibly and inexpensively" [66] (p. 2) reduce global temperature levels [66][67][68][69]. They can be divided into space-based, atmospheric, and surface-based methods [12].…”

“…Even though the Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD) explicitly regulates the modification of weather and the deliberate modification of natural processes, its scope is limited to military and hostile use and is therefore not applicable to geoengineering. Likewise, other treaties that are topically related, such as the London Convention and London Protocol (LC/LP) on the dumping of waste and other matter at sea, the Geneva Convention on the Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and other Celestial Bodies, or Convention on International Civil Aviation, do not offer a general normative basis to determine a general framework for atmospheric SRM and have been reviewed elsewhere in more detail [66,129].…”

“…As high-tech, large-scale, finance-intensive technologies that seemingly allow for business-as-usual behavior, atmospheric SRM development triggers the interest of fossil-based industries and wealthy technology enthusiasts [186][187][188]. Trying to create a steering effect by directing public funding to the desired research, e.g., by the World Bank, will probably not be very effective as there are strong private interests in pursuing atmospheric SRM enabling research, which does not depend on public funding [66,72,129,186]. A major problem in regulating respective research is that experimental research on geoengineering technologies amounts to the practical application of technologies such as atmospheric SRM.…”

How do we overcome abrupt degradation of marine ecosystems and meet the challenge of heat waves and climate extremes?

“…Meanwhile, climate‐scale interventions, generally termed geoengineering, are defined as “deliberate intervention in the climate system to counteract man‐made global warming” (Shepherd, ) and are likely deployed at larger scales than for environmental engineering. There is, however, some overlap between regional and climate‐scale interventions, such as for marine cloud seeding or brightening that is proposed to produce mitigation of severe heat stress conditions from local to large geographic scales (Irvine et al, ; Latham, Kleypas, Hauser, Parkes, & Gadian, ; Reynolds, ). A further example of such overlap is also for ocean alkalization which has been conducted on individual reef sites (see above) but has also been proposed as a climate intervention approach at the basin scale (Albright & Cooley, ).…”

Technical characteristics of a solar geoengineering deployment and implications for governance

“…Most of the geoengineering governance literature to date focuses on either the governance of nearer-term research prior to deployment (e.g., Nicholson et al 2018) or on the decision of whether or not to deploy, including different scenarios under which deployment might be considered, and different models for participating in the initial deployment decision. In a recent comprehensive review of the literature, Reynolds (2019) observes that "… little writing has considered the governance needs and potential responses that would arise subsequent to any solar geoengineering deployment." Indeed, we are not aware of any substantive discussions in the governance literature that addresses either the complexity of the decision to deploy solar geoengineering, which is far more than a simple binary yes/no, nor the series of ongoing operational decisions following the start of a deployment.…”