Climate Engineering: The Need for Science, Governance and Better Understanding

This opinion piece is part of the the Global Governance Futures 2025 program which brings together young professionals to look ahead and recommend ways to address global challenges.

As Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replace Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the post-2015 world, climate change will become more central to the priorities across various groups of stakeholders, funders and governments. After years of gridlock, there actually were two major developments in climate change discussions in 2014. First, in the UN climate talks, which ended in December ​‘14 in Lima, where negotiators from 190 countries agreed to a range of decisions that were laid out in a four-page text. Those decisions can be a useful foundation for 2015’s Conference of Parties (COP) in Paris. The second development was marked by the bilateral agreement between the US and China, the two largest carbon emitting countries of the world. Considering the fact that the projected global warming is much higher compared to the historical climate conditions and variability within which human and natural systems have evolved, these developments, though welcome, fall short of effectively countering climate change. If we are serious about countering climate change, then it is high time for increased collaboration between scientists and policy-makers to create a governance structure around the three-pronged approach – Mitigation, Adaptation, Geoengineering (MAG).

Mitigation or reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is the safest and most predictable method of moderating climate change — it is the preferred approach as it avoids climate change all together. Adaptation includes policies designed to plan for and enable countries to adapt their economies to a warmer world, with the rationale that foresight and planning can reduce the burdens of dealing with climate change. This is now considered an unavoidable option because some degree of climate change is inevitable, so adaptation to the new reality, especially in developing countries, is necessary. Geoengineering refers to the intentional, large-scale manipulation of the global environment to counteract the effects of climate change. Currently, geoengineering is neither preferred nor unavoidable, but this may change in the next few years.

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