LONDON, Oct 1 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Technologies to reflect some of the sun’s rays away from Earth, as a way to cool future runaway climate change, are moving closer to becoming a reality, and rules are needed now to govern them, scientists and other experts said on Monday.
“There is no risk-free path at this point” in dealing with climate change, said David Morrow, research director for the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment at the Washington-based American University.
Around the globe, research is pushing forward on potential cooling techniques such as spraying particles into the upper atmosphere to mimic volcanic eruptions or artificially brightening sea clouds, experts said in a report.
Around the globe, research is pushing forward on potential cooling techniques such as spraying particles into the upper atmosphere to mimic volcanic eruptions or artificially brightening sea clouds, experts said in a report.
Such sun-dimming technology is designed to reduce the risks associated with accelerating warming in coming decades, from fiercer storms to harsher heatwaves.
But the report by a group of international climate and governance experts warned the technology could create new risks – “including climatic, environmental, social, geopolitical and ethical risks”.
For example, it might dissuade countries from curbing their climate-changing emissions, in the hope a technological fix is on the way.
Or a single nation might deploy the technologies in its own interests, without international rules in place, in an effort to quell a political outcry at home or shift scarce rainfall to drought-hit farmers, the experts said.
“Desperate people do desperate things,” warned Andy Parker, who runs a governance initiative on solar engineering technologies backed by Britain’s Royal Society, the World Academy of Sciences and the Environmental Defense Fund.
The report aims to guide research and policy on “solar radiation management” (SRM) through 2025 with a set of principles.
It recommends that efforts to curb climate change and adapt to its impacts must remain the top priority, ahead of technological fixes.
The report also calls for the risks and benefits of SRM to be “thoroughly and transparently” evaluated, and for research to focus on the social needs of the world’s poor.
It says “robust” governance, including a mechanism to resolve conflicts, must be in place before any deployment of the technologies is considered.
“The starting point was that research is happening and we need to talk about it,” said Aarti Gupta, an expert on governance of technological risk at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and one of the report authors.
The 14-member panel that developed the principles included academic experts in fields such as policy and governance, social sciences, international relations and conflict resolution.
The group “fundamentally disagreed” on whether research on the technologies should even be allowed to go ahead but accepted the need to discuss them publicly, said Simon Nicholson, co-head of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment.
Leave a Reply