SGG: Geoengineering, crisis in international order, and comparative global governance regimes: roadmaps or dead ends?

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The aim of this project is to provide a theoretically and historically grounded, policy-relevant analysis to inform solar geoengineering governance initiatives. It will investigate whether the frequent comparison to the governance of nuclear weapons provides an effective roadmap for solar geoengineering governance and use its analysis of the nuclear analogy to advance academic and policy debates on the potential for feasible, effective, and equitable solar geoengineering governance. The increasingly visible consequences of climate change are leading scientists and policymakers to consider the extreme measure of trying to cool global temperatures by reducing incoming solar radiation, a process called solar geoengineering. The most prominent solar geoengineering strategy being considered is Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), which involves spraying reflective particles into the stratosphere. If the technology is to be safely developed and used it will require extensive international cooperation to govern and changing international political conditions could make it more difficult to control. Nuclear weapons governance is frequently identified as a useful comparison for SAI and references to nuclear governance in solar geoengineering literature currently serve to provide political reassurance that it will be possible to design effective global governance. However, the relevance of nuclear weapons governance for SAI is underexamined and comparisons between the two technologies minimise or ignore persistent challenges in nuclear governance. These challenges in nuclear governance may suggest lessons for developing solar geoengineering governance. This is an interdisciplinary project combining archival research, participant observation and key stakeholder interviews to examine historical and current linkages between these two potentially planet-altering technologies to provide more informed analysis for emerging solar geoengineering governance initiatives.