An international âcoalitionâ of scientists and governance scholars launched an initiative on January 17 that calls for a moratorium on the study and development of a controversial climate-change mitigation strategy known as solar geoengineering.
Through the initiative, the scholars are calling for an âInternational Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineeringâ. It is particularly opposed to the idea of spraying aerosols in the stratosphere to scatter some sunlight into space because, to quote from a paper some of the team members have published today delineating their position, the technology is âungovernable in a fair, democratic and effective mannerâ.
âDespite its potentially catastrophic effects, the advocates of solar geoengineering think of this as a technological adventure of sorts,â Prakash Kashwan, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and one of the members of the coalition, told The Wire Science.
âThose who are committed to the goals of maintaining planetary integrity and avoiding a planetary-scale shock treatment must commit to an international non-use agreement.â
There are broadly kinds of response to climate change: adaptation, by which a country adapts to the effects of climate change, and mitigation, in which a country lowers its carbon and greenhouse-gas emissions and focuses on getting the existing carbon out of the atmosphere. Solar geoengineering is a mitigation strategy that involves reducing the amount of sunlight reaching Earthâs surface, thus subtracting that component of the planetâs warming.
Solar geoengineering is controversial because itâs impossible to contain its consequences in one geographical region and, by extension, to know their full extent. For example, if the U.S. government decides to spray large quantities of aerosols into the stratosphere over its west coast, and scatter sunlight, there will be implications for the American mainland, for temperature and wind patterns over the Pacific Ocean, for marine life (and the livelihoods of people that depend on them), and could cascade into longer-term effects over South America, Oceania and Asia as well.
âDespite over two decades of research by geoengineering modelers, there remain large gaps in the scientific understanding of planetary-scale impacts of the deployment of solar geoengineering,â Kashwan, who is also one of the 16 authors of the teamâs paper, told The Wire Science. âThe nature of this problem is such that many of these uncertainties will not be resolved until after a full-scale deployment has been conductedâwhich means that we donât know and may never know the true effects of solar geoengineering.â
These could include significant changes in the Asian and East African monsoon systems, Kashwan said by way of example, âwhich will destabilise the lives of over two billion peopleâ who depend on them.
The effects of climate change are similar, in that they transcend international borders. However, there are international bodies to govern countriesâ responses to climate change, notably the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). At the âCOPâ climate talks organised by the FCCC, for example, representatives of different countries jointly negotiate what each country ought to do in order to minimise consequences for other countries.
However, some countries have been independently exploring different solar geoengineering solutions. While their researchers may be talking to each other, stakeholders in other countriesâespecially poorer ones already in line to suffer the worst effects of climate changeâare far from being consulted. This is the fundamental impetus for the ânon-use agreementâ.
According to an âopen letterâ accompanying the coalitionâs paper, the coalition is led by Frank Biermann, a professor of global sustainability governance at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He is also the paperâs the first author. The letter is available to read here along with the list of signatories (one of whom is author Amitav Ghosh).
Current opposition to solar geoengineering is also grounded in fairness. One aspect, of course, is that a solar-geoengineering solution designed for the needs of and deployed by one country could affect weather patterns over other countries. To quote from the paper itself: âGiven the anticipated low monetary costs of some of these technologies, such as stratospheric aerosols injection, a few countries could engage in solar geoengineering unilaterally or in small coalitions even when other countries oppose such deploymentâa possibility economists have presented as the âfree-driver effectâ.â
Another aspect is that most of the research on the subject, especially that closest to fruition, is currently restricted to elite universities that have the resources to pursue such a precarious topic.
Kashwan wrote for The Wire Science in 2018 that in the absence of an effective way to govern geoengineering, âsome âhigh-levelâ scientific pronouncements have assumed stewardship of climate geoengineering,â and that they âdonât enjoy broad-based social or political legitimacyâ.
âIn the over-five years that I have been an active participant in debates on the global governance of solar geoengineering, advocates [of the technology] have made very little effort to support international governance of solar geoengineering,â he told The Wire Science. âUnder these conditions, it is very important to distinguish fundamental scientific research from the effort to develop solar geoengineering technologies with the goal of deploying them as part of global climate âsolutionsâ.â
In a report published in March last year, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) requested the U.S. government to âsetup a transparent research administration framework, including a code of conduct, an open registry of researchersâ proposals for studies and a fixed process by which the government will grant permits for âoutdoor experimentsâ,â as The Wire Science reported. And it recommended an R&D allocation of $100-200 million.
The NASEM report recommended that this setup and infrastructure should be used to explore three solar geoengineering strategies: stratospheric aerosol injection (described earlier), cirrus cloud thinning and marine cloud brightening. All three strategies have the same intended outcome: to send some of the sunlight reaching Earth back into space.
Nature News reported at the time that Joe Biden being in the presidentâs office instead of Donald Trump had encouraged experts in the U.S. to believe that pursuing geoengineering research will not âmerely displace regulations and other efforts to curb greenhouse gases, and give industry a free passâ. Yet at the COP26 climate talks in October-November, both Biden and the U.S. were upbraided for their reluctance to do enough, stoking concerns that richer countries could deploy risky technologies like solar geoengineering to buy time for more stringent climate action.
The teamâs paper published today also focuses a chunk of its arguments on the ways in which it expects solar geoengineering to be governed, whether extant multilateral fora and agencies can support the existence of the corresponding governing body, and whether there are existing alternatives.
Broadly, according to the paper, countries need to have âpolitical controlâ over solar geoengineeringâwhich means powerful countries will need to place their technologies âunder the control of effective multilateral institutions, with guarantees of collective veto rights for the most vulnerable nationsâ. But the paper goes on to argue that âglobal decisions on deployment of solar geoengineering are unlikely to find consensusâ, that âdisagreements about ⊠the degree of cooling, the duration of deployment, or the specific latitudes and distribution of aerosols ⊠will inevitably occurâ.
For this, the paper continues, there needs to be a dispute resolution mechanism, but technologically advanced countries like the U.S. or Russia are unlikely to accept a one-country-one-vote system of oversight for planetary-scale geoengineering. In short, this portion of the paper concludes, âthe deployment of solar geoengineering at planetary scale would require entirely new international organisations with convincing means of democratic control and unprecedented enforcement powersââand which donât exist.
The paper also notes that countries that become signatory to its proposed âInternational Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineeringâ could vote together at institutions, like the âCOPâ climate talks, as well as âsend a strong message about the undesirability of solar geoengineering to the global research, technology and climate communitiesâ. This, it says, could potentially âresonate with funding agencies, philanthropic foundations, and large corporations that otherwise might be inclined to invest in the development of these technologiesâ.
Read the coalitionâs open letter here.
Source: Mronline.org