Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Geoengineering governance
The Royal Society 2009 report on geoengineering not only reviewed the current science
but also made the important step of trying to understand the governance issues associated
with playing with the global climate system. There are a great many ethical issues that arise
when considering how changing regional and global climate may affect countries differ-
ently. There may be overall positive results but minor changes in rainfall patterns, which
could mean that whole countries receive too little or too much rain, possibly resulting in
disaster. The Royal Society summarized the current position, showing that there are three
main views on geoengineering: (1) It is a route to buying back some time to allow the
failed UNFCCC negotiations to catch up; (2) It represents a dangerous manipulation of the
Earth system and may be intrinsically unethical; or (3) It is strictly an insurance policy
against major mitigation policy failure. Even if research is allowed to go ahead and geoen-
gineering solutions are required, like many emerging areas of modern technology, new
flexible governance and regulatory frameworks will be required. Currently there are many
international treaties with a bearing on geoengineering and it seems that no single instru-
ment applies. Hence geoengineering like climate change challenges our nation-state view
of the world and new ways of governing will be required in the future.
