Climate Geoengineering Governance

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The work in this project is grouped around three themes - three sets of understandings which are required to inform decisions on the governance of geoengineering. The set of work packages under each theme is supported by a common set of workshops that will help to integrate the insights from the work package elements, and generate increased engagement with policymakers, practitioners and representatives of civil society as the project proceeds. 1. Framings of Geoengineering. How is geoengineering currently framed in sociotechnical and legal terms? What can we learn about its similarities and differences in relation to the multilevel governance challenges of other complex technologies to emerge in recent times, or from attempts to manage complexity in the financial system in the light of the recent crisis? What are the conceptions of justice and fairness that might be used to frame our approach to its regulation? What current treaties and laws bear upon it? What other broad purposes, other than the mitigation of climate change itself, might geoengineering governance be trying to achieve? These issues are pursued in work packages 1-3 in months 1-6 of the project.2. Dilemmas of Control of Geoengineering Technologies. What particular governance challenges and opportunities does geoengineering present - in assessing benefits and risks, in terms of public acceptability, in the risks of lock-in and path dependency, in avoiding "appraisal optimism" in assessing the economic case, in appropriate use of precaution in the face of uncertainty, and in international relations - and how might we try to deal with these? How do we see geoengineering working as a system of innovation - who would experiment or implement where, and what capacity building and technology transfer might be involved? Work on these issues comprises work packages 4-7 covering months 7-18.3. Choosing Governance and Regulatory Requirements. How would governance and regulatory arrangements work in practice both within and between jurisdictions? Can they be sensitive and adaptive enough to respond to changes in impacts or criteria? What new rulemaking and procedural harmonisation would be required, and could the buy-in of various stakeholders be secured? Are the domestic controls in place to address these requirements in a variety of key jurisdictions? Finally, what wider lessons for the assessment, regulation and governance of emerging technologies can we learn from the geoengineering case? Work package 8, covering these issues, would run from months 19-24. It includes scenario workshops with stakeholders in helping to define possible circumstances in which different approaches to geoengineering might be the subject of experiment or deployment, and the governance approaches required.