Workshop Motivation: The workshop is motivated by the current surge in interest and controversy related to SRM, as climate risks mount and scale-up of other essential responses remains slow. SRM might be able to reduce severe near-term climate risks more than is possible with other responses alone but cannot replace these other responses and brings new uncertainties and potential risks.
The future prospect of some nation or other actor proposing to use SRM, or even taking steps to prepare for such use or develop the capabilities, would present novel and serious challenges to international governance. These usage-related governance challenges are different and more serious than the governance issues raised by near-term SRM research that have dominated debate thus far. Moreover, these cannot be addressed by simply pursuing SRM research and expecting this to resolve governance. Explicit consideration of SRM governance cannot wait, because proposals to use it or similar disruptions could happen soon; and because vigorous expansion of research might lead to research-related actions large enough to trigger international concerns.
Workshop Objectives: The workshop will draw on relevant research and practical expertise to build concrete understanding of SRM’s geopolitical and governance challenges and ways to address them, including specifically the design and potential contributions or pitfalls of a moratorium. While we will use the moratorium proposals to give structure and specificity to the discussion, we hope that this conversation will also stimulate a usefully concrete exploration of the broader governance needs raised by the potential use of SRM, and of feasible near-term steps to start building needed governance capacity.
To encourage an open and exploratory approach to these novel and challenging issues, the workshop will follow the Chatham House Rule. Organizers will produce a report from the workshop, which will aim to capture the range of ideas considered and identify potential pathways forward, without attribution to any individual participants.
Workshop Organizers: Joshua Horton, Edward A. Parson, Barbara Koremenos, and David Keith