Report of the World Academy of Art and Science Symposium: Governance of Geoengineering
July 31, 2009
Menlo Park, California
Purpose of the Symposium: To see if the Academy wished to pursue work on governance of geoengineering and if so what our best contributions might be. It is noted that the Technical University of Munich and the Club of Rome (Brussels Chapter) have invited the Academy to take a lead on governance issues in connection with the Technical University’s work on a wide range of geoengineering topics taking place over the next few years.
Attendees: The Symposium was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Academy’s Board of Trustees. In addition, a number of invited guests participated. A list of attendees is attached.
The seminar was opened by Walter Anderson, WAAS President Emeritus, who said that the issue of geoengineering is one element in the larger picture of our entry into an Anthropocene Epoch in which the human species -- confronted with the recognition of increasing impacts on Earth's atmosphere and ecosystems combined with increasing scientific/technological capacity to detect those impacts, finds itself in a challenging new role of responsibility for the future evolution of life on the planet. He outlined the Symposium’s three presentations by top scientists on geoengineering and its governance, to be followed by discussion to help the Academy decide on whether it would pursue the topic and if so how it would do so.
I. Presentation by Prof. Ken Caldeira, Chair, US National Academy of Science inquiry into geoengineering.
Prof. Caldeira spoke from Italy. An audio tape of his presentation and his power points are on the Academy’s website under Climate System Management.
Dr. Caldeira said the topic was a highly emotive mix of facts, knowledge, values and speculation. Computer simulations are small in number, but there is general agreement that geoengineering is a last resort solution to climate change. The most likely technological six would be spreading SO2 aerosols in the upper atmosphere, that could be deployed in two years with effects in five years.
He recommended research that would be 90% on stratospheric interventions, 9% on cloud whitening, and 1% on everything else. In his view, changing surface reflectivity would require 37% of the world’s land versus 10% for agriculture use now.
The next step would be to design a research program. Some interventions, like cloud whitening, could be tested within a country or over the open sea. Ultimately, there might be a suite of one or more global interventions with regional patching to fine tune the effects.
But there would be huge governance issues as there will be winners and losers.
II. Presentation by Prof. Granger Morgan, Carnegie Mellon University (and chair of a recent international conference on risk management and geoengineering.) Dr. Morgan spoke to the symposium from Pittsburgh. An audio tape of his discussion and a copy of his power points are on the Academy’s website under Climate System Management.
Dr. Morgan said that based on his work with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Lisbon meeting on risk management, he felt the global community needed to concentrate on: costs vis-à-vis abatement; risks such as acidification and coral damage; who has standing to work on these issues; transparency; reversibility; equity (the dynamics of which may change over time); and liability. On the last item, there could be liability even for research. Liability issues are being studied, he said, at the University of Vermont Law School. (Note: James Gustave Speth, former administrator of UNDP and founder of the World Resources Institute has recently joined the Law School’s faculty.)
Dr. Morgan felt there needed to be a coordinating body for development of the science, e.g., the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences or the International Council for Science. He said some leading students of governance believe there should be a formal agreement on research, others are firmly opposed. Some way needed to be found to arrive at norms, to find consensus that only in emergencies will there be reverting to deploying geoengineering solutions, and to agree on how action should take place.
He felt there was urgency in getting such work done. The IPCC planning meeting for the 5th Assessment will discuss geoengineering for the first time.
III. Dr. Jason Blackstock, Senior Analyst, International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (Vienna). Dr. Blackstock’s audio/visual presentation and power points may also be found on the Academy’s website under Climate System Management.
Dr. Blackstock said the core governance issues are governance of what and by whom. There also needs to be exploration of how geoengineering governance emergencies might happen.
Governance of what: from research to long-term use.
Novim’s study covered development of technologies. Assuming aerosols will be developed during the 2010-2020 period, how will non-interventionist tests, field tests, triggering monitored deployment and management of deployment take place.
Values need to be agreed for: 1) laboratory work..transparency and accessibility, especially for poorer countries; 2) field testing where scale of impacts need to be tested..vulnerabilities, risks; 3) deployment trigger..moral hazard, defining of what an emergency is; and 4) management and fine tuning..who defines, how many should be involved?
In considering management of what, only a small amount of research is currently taking place. Testing will be much more political. To date climate scientists have not thought of themselves as field scientists, so they will have a lot of learning to do. Monitoring will be very important, e.g., deploying SO2 will affect ozone levels.
Governance by Whom.
Which international mechanisms can we rely on? Dr. Blackstock said Japan is doing research on this.
Options: Unitary rational actor? (and if so, how could that be decided?). Nation States? (control, equity, responsibility, liabilities; how cope with unilateralism?). A new international actor, e.g., the scientific community could self-regulate.
Thus at what level should decisions be made? And what role should international organizations play?
Dr. Blackstock’s last major question was: How will governance of geoengineering emerge? He saw four possibilities: 1) in response to a climate emergency; 2) to buy time for mitigation; 3) to buy time for adaptation (in which “what is the ideal climate” would be an issue); and 4) in the context of climate control.
He noted that intellectual property rights and private sector interests would be at play and would have to be governed.
He ended by noting that there are high uncertainties of future scenarios and many possible technologies and actors with different motivations. One certainty is that finding doable governance solutions will be complex.
Discussion of the presentations focused on what others are doing and what the Academy should do.
Bob Berg introduced the discussion phase of the Symposium. He said that finding parallels to the geoengineering governance challenge could be useful, e.g., drawing upon the lessons of mobilization for war (notably, the US industrial mobilization in WW II) and a composite of the best cases of cross-governance activity in Africa to combat HIV/AIDS. Both cases called for governance-wide responses, as well climate change. So geo-engineering governance challenges will be located in the midst of a lot of governance adjustments, many of them profound.
Despite strong progress in governance of such environmental issues as ozone, the overall record of gaining international agreement that actually led to effective actions is thin, as demonstrated by a high level conference on environmental governance that took place in Glion in early July 2009. At a minimum now, the UN needs to establish an active watching brief on geoengineering in anticipation that the issue will wind up on the global political stage.
There are multilateral governance precedents. Notably, there is the on-going work of the London Convention that authorized testing of ocean fertilization, but put a hold on commercial deployment. There is the UN Convention on Biological Diversity under which 191 nations in May 2008 put a moratorium on large scale ocean fertilization schemes, but allowed small scale research in coastal waters. And there is the 1970’s Environmental Modification Convention under which the UN Security Council could set sanctions for the military tinkering with the environment.
For something of such high consequence to the world, the amount of research money being sought is almost laughingly small and may not yet approach the amount that billionaire Richard Branson would reward ($25 million) for a commercially viable solution to removing greenhouse gases. Because not much research has gone on, but will increasingly take place, it is timely to consider governance issues.
Participants shared information on studies taking place that they know of.
Research reviews include:
- Novim, focusing on scientific assessment of stratospheric aerosols (Report released March 2009);
- American Physical Society: focusing on carbon capture;
- Royal Society: evaluation of technologies, governance and legal aspects, concerns of use of technologies as potential weapons. (Report released September 2009); and
- Entrepreneurial scientists.
Socio-political studies include:
- Council on Foreign Relations;
- Lisbon Risk Assessment Conference;
- National Academy of Science panels on governance and ethics.
A issue was raised as to who has legitimacy to do this research?
Recommendations were presented that would aid consideration by the Academy’s Board of Trustees (meeting in the days subsequent to the Symposium) on what the Academy might do in its own work on the governance of geoengineering:
It was agreed that it is important to internationalize this work, particularly by bringing in scientists from the parts of the world not now involved (which are most parts). One way of doing this is to use international forums where various policy perspectives can be heard, e.g., the London Convention insofar as research involving the ocean is concerned. It was noted that the London Convention staff was updating its research protocols to account for geoengineering.
It was also agreed that the Academy needed to frame its own work in the context of larger philosophical and ethical issues. In addition, it was noted that there will be profound effects on Earth’s biota due to climate change and geoengineering and this needs to be factored into discussions. With these considerations in mind, it was agreed to call the wider topic Climate System Management.
There were various ideas given on how to conduct research on governance, including to reverse engineer the topic, and to use modeling and simulations.
Promotion of discussion of the issues was recommended directly with Fellows (perhaps using web discussions as well as meetings) and using the power of the Academy to convene with wider circles. It was also recommended that informing the Fellows of the Academy through a bibliography covering studies and discussions would be useful.
Eventually a White Paper by the Academy might prove a useful contribution as a stand alone product, as a contribution to the Technical University of Munich/Club of Rome exercise, and as a way to influence public policy.
There was consensus that the Academy should select this topic as one on which to work. It was also noted how helpful this Symposium was as a model on how the Academy could consider other topics of study by the Academy.
Respectfully submitted,
Robert J. Berg
Walter T. Anderson
co-organizers
Attached: List of Participants - Symposium on Governance of Geoengineering
- Walter Truett Anderson, President Emeritus, WAAS
- Robert J. Berg, Trustee, WAAS
- Jason Blackstock, Senior Analyst, International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis
- Robert Horn, World Business Council for Sustainable Development; Fellow, WAAS
- John Cox, Trustee, WAAS
- Jose I. dos R. Furtado, Secretary General, WAAS
- Geoffrey Hamer, President, Biofocus; Trustee, WAAS
- Garry Jacobs, Trustee, WAAS
- Margaret Leinan, President, Climate Response Fund
- Sergio Lub, Architect and Designer
- Timothy C. Mack, President, World Future Society
- Jo Anne McDowell, Designer; Associate Fellow, WAAS
- Jeffrey Schwartz, President, WAAS
- Ivo Slaus, President, South-East Europe Division; WAAS, Trustee, WAAS
- Guy Stevens, Trustee, WAAS
- Ted Trzyna, President, California Institute of Public Affairs; Senior Advisor, IUCN; Fellow, WAAS
- Raoul Weiler, President, EU Chapter, Club of Rome; Fellow, WAAS
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