This is a new and interesting paper on the GGR website:
"Experiments for technology proposals to deliberately intervene in the Earth’s climate system to moderate anthropogenic climate change, collecitively known as geoengineering, have begun."
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"Different conceptualisations of ‘participation’ were also
present amongst the corpus publications, despite a general agreement that a
‘let’s engage people’ attitude was favourable. With reference to Arnstein’s (1969)
influential ‘ladder of participation’, the objective to ‘consult and inform’
people on geoengineering experimentation suggests conceptualisations of
participation in decision making that constitute at best ‘degrees of tokenism’
through ‘informing’, ‘consulting’ or ‘placating’, and at worst ‘nonparticipation’
through ‘manipulation’ or ‘therapy’. Whilst most perspectives on participation
amongst the corpus publications would favour so–called degrees of tokenism,
‘manipulation’ can also be sought through explicit (e.g. HOME) or implicit
(e.g. Mercer et al., 2011) framings that may inadvertently, tacitly or
deliberately obscure commitments to securing particular outcomes, be they
oppositional or supportive. Whilst the upper echelons of Arnstein’s ladder that
call for ‘degrees of citizen power’ reveal a commitment to egalitarian
conceptions of democracy in itself, the rationales for deliberation extend
beyond the normative to substantive and instrumental ones too (Fiorino, 1990)."
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Safety First! Framing and Governing Climate Geoengineering Experimentation
Rob Bellamy
Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of
Oxford
Abstract
Experiments for technology proposals to deliberately
intervene in the Earth’s climate system to moderate anthropogenic climate
change, collec tively known as geoengineering, have begun. Recent controversies
have demonstrated that they are more than simply a technical concern: they are
political, social and ethical ones too. With more experiments planned, it is
imperative that the ways in which such ambitions are understood and used by
different participants in discourses on geoengineering are scruti nised by
social science. For the first time, this article examines framings of
geoengineering experimentation using a corpus approach to thematic discourse
analysis. The analysis identifies eleven distinct framings with twenty–four
distinct sub–frames under four thematic constructs:
knowledge, precaution, control and society. These framings
are discussed in the light of research into divergent epistemic and
institutional cultures.
The article concludes by offering a ‘clumsy’ solution space
for geoengineering governance and climate response governance at large.
Introduction
experiment /ɪk′spɛrɪm(ə)nt/ n 1 a scientific procedure
undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact.
1.1 a course of action tentatively adopted without being sure of the outcome. V
1 perform a scientific procedure, especially in a laboratory, to determine something.
1.1 try out new ideas or methods (Oxford English Dictionary).
In July 2012 one hundred tonnes of iron sulphate was
released into the North Pacific Ocean off the western seaboard of Canada
(Tollefson, 2012).
Those behind the release, the Haida Salmon Restoration
Corporation, had done so in an attempt to stimulate the growth of
phytoplankton. The reasons for this were twofold: first, to increase the
declining local salmon population in support of fishing efforts from the Haida
Gwaii archipelago;
and second, to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide in order
to sell carbon credits to companies seeking to offset their greenhouse gas
emissions. This experiment in ‘ocean iron fertilisation’ was the latest in a
string of such experiments testing the ‘iron hypothesis’ of carbon drawdown (Martin,
1990). Yet, it sparked controversy later that year when British newspaper The
Guardian reported the ‘rogue’ incident as being in violation of two United
Nations conventions (Lukacs, 2012). The furore was in large part due to the
experiment’s conceptual intention: testing climate ‘geoengineering’.
Notwithstanding the long and chequered history of its
antecedents (Fleming, 2010), the idea of deliberate, large–scale intervention
in the Earth’s climate system has recently gained prominence as a possible response
to anthropogenic climate change (Royal Society, 2009). Insufficient efforts to
mitigate climate change through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the
risk of a climate ‘emergency’ are two dominant problem definitions driving
interest in ‘geoengineering’ technology (Bella my et al., 2012). Such concerns
are used to justify geoengineering re search, and increasingly, experimentation
(Royal Society, 2009; Novim, 5 2009). Geoengineering is not only limited to
ocean iron fertilisation but subsumes a disparate array of technology
proposals. These proposals can be broadly divided amongst those that seek to
capture and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (‘carbon
geoengineering’); and those that seek to reflect a proportion of sunlight away
from the Earth (‘solar geoengineering’).
Most geoengineering proposals have so far undergone no experimentation beyond that in laboratories or through computational model ling. The
most notable exception to this has been the inadvertent field experiments in
ocean iron fertilisation carbon geoengineering that took place prior to the
Haida Gwaii incident (Strong et al., 2009); of which there have been fourteen,
including SOIREE (Boyd & Abraham, 2001) and LOHAFEX (Thiele et al., 2012).
Yet, solar geoengineering experiments in enhancing the reflectivity of clouds
at sea (‘marine cloud brightening’) and in injecting reflective sulphuric acid
aerosol into the stratosphere (‘stratospheric aerosol injection’) have also
begun. Much as with prior experiments in ocean iron fertilisation, those in
marine cloud brightening have so far been inadvertent; that is to say, they
were conducted to ex plore basic questions in our scientific understanding of
Earth systems. For instance, whilst the Eastern Pacific Emitted Aerosol Cloud
Experiment (E-PEACE), sought to address gaps in our knowledge of cloud
perturbation processes (Russell et al., 2013), it has also shed light on the
capacity for marine cloud brightening to produce cooling effects (Russell,
2012).
Experiments in stratospheric aerosol injection have been
more purposeful. This is in no small part due to its increasingly hegemonic
place in the field of geoengineering (Bellamy et al., 2012). Despite assessment
findings to the contrary (Bellamy et al., 2013; Bellamy et al., in press), the
proposal is peddled for its alleged effectiveness (Lenton & Vaughan, 2009),
feasibility (Fox & Chapman, 2011), and low costs (Barrett, 2008).
To test this technology, scientists and engineers have
turned to observe the behaviour of aerosols released by volcanoes in ‘natural’
experiments (Robock et al., 2013) and by releasing aerosols from helicopters
(Izrael et al., 2009). A somewhat more ill–fated experiment attracted
controversy after seeking to test delivery hardware as part of the
Stratospheric Partircle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project
(Cressey, 2012).
Had it not been indefinitely postponed due to an absence of
governance and a conflict of interest in technology patenting, the test–bed
would have seen the injection of water to a tropospheric height of 1km via a
pipe and tethered balloon.
The level of intervention in the environment demanded by
experimentation differs significantly between geoengineering proposals. Of course,
experimentation with some less invasive proposals, such as direct air capture
and storage of carbon dioxide, ‘can and should be encouraged without delay’
(Royal Society, 2009: 52). Other proposals, however, such as those discussed
above with international, transboundary or commons implications, demand a much
higher level of technical intervention. Yet, through controversy,
experimentation with these proposals has already demonstrated that it is more
than simply a technical concern: it is a political, social and ethical one
too. With more experiments planned (Latham et al., 2012; Parson & Keith,
2013; Keith, 2013) it is vital that the ways in which such ambitions are
understood and used by different participants in discourses on geoengineering
are scrutinised by social science. Such re search will play an important role
in developing principles for geoengineering governance (Rayner et al., 2013)
and in supporting responsible research and innovation (Owen et al., 2013).
A number of scholars have already begun to examine
understand ings and uses of ‘geoengineering’ more broadly both in the media and
in academic and grey literature. Through discourse analyses of the ways in which
social actors have chosen to organise and communicate, or ‘frame’ (Entman,
1993), geoengineering, social scientific research has revealed a variety of
framings. In the media it was initially framed supportively, through
‘spectacle’ for its possible role as a solution to climate change (Buck, 2012),
or as a remedy for climate change ‘catastrophe’ through three master metaphors:
‘the planet is a body’, ‘the planet is a machine’, and ‘the planet is a patient
or addict’ (Nerlich & Jaspal, 2013). Media framings have since diversified,
utilising frames on risk, governance and accountability, economics, morality,
security and justice (Porter & Hulme, 2013); and war, controllability and
health, in both support and opposition of geoengineering (Luokkanen et al.,
2013). Further diversification since is argued to have opened up the societal
debate on geoengineering through framings of ambivalence, avoiding catastrophe,
pragmatism, norms and values, benefits for society, controversy, a techno–fix
and of governance (Scholte et al., 2013).
Discourse analyses of academic and grey literature on
geoengineering inherently contend with more substantive and detailed data sets
than those of media publications. Yet, framings in the geoengineering assessment
literature have been revealed to be less diverse, ‘closing down’ on particular
problem definitions, knowledges and pathways (Bellamy et al., 2012). Discursive
strategies in ‘philosophical exceptionalism’ and ‘market and the economy’
amongst scientific and political advocates of geoengineering have shown
similar scope for closure (Sikka, 2012). The broader academic literature on
geoengineering has been shown to hold somewhat more varied framings with
emphases on ‘risk–benefit’, ‘governance’ and ‘natural balance’ (Huttunen &
Hildén, 2013). High–profile academic and grey literature reports have shown yet
further variation in framings of the geoengineering imaginary, and in
particular revealing tensions between them: ‘science before policy, or vice
versa’; ‘geoengineering is new, or old’; ‘balancing the Earth system, or
societal reform’; and ‘geoengineering research (or deployment) now, or
geoengineering is a distraction from mitigation’ (Markusson, 2013).
Building on this earlier research into geoengineering
discourses more generally, for the first time this article seeks to explore the
more specific understandings and uses of geoengineering experimentation and related
concepts by different participants in the discourse. It begins by detailing the
research methodology before reporting and then discussing its analytical
findings. The article concludes by summarising its contribu tion to the
literature and drawing recommendations for future research and policy.
For the full paper visit:
Safety First! Framing and Governing Climate Geoengineering Experimentation
Rob Bellamy
Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford
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