Fair Governance in Climate Engineering

Anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere cause global warming, leading to the melting of glaciers, a rise of the sea-levels, severe storms, coastal erosion, drought and lower crop productivity. Considerable efforts – such as the 2015 Paris Agreement – have been undertaken to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and to stop this process. However, in recent years it has become apparent that additional action besides mitigation is urgently needed to avoid dangerous climate change. It has become clear that technical interventions into the climate system are urgently needed. Such technologies fall under the header of climate engineering (CE). This paper discusses how climate engineering must be governed to be fair. It argues that – depending on the geographic outreach of risky side-effects of experimentation with and implementation of CE strategies – direct democratic involvement of those affected becomes more or less relevant. The paper unfolds in two sections. First, we show why the geographic distribution of risks is relevant for ethical evaluation. Due to the planetary impact and unintended side-effects as well as the uncertainty of these effects, climate engineering has faced considerable ethical concerns. However, once a consensus for research and implementation of CE strategies is reached, there is the urgent need for international governance structures and governing principles for both experimentation and implementation at different geographical scales, since benefits and drawbacks of different CE strategies are unlikely to be evenly distributed globally and across regions. Depending on the CE strategy employed, they can have side-effects spread only locally, but also regionally or all over the world. Since the application of technologies at such a large scale represents very big and different risks in time and space, commonly implemented governance structures as known from other technological fields are not sufficient enough. Therefore, governance structure for CE should not only address the application of CE strategies, but also their unequally distributed effects in time and space. Second, based on this assumption, we present a way for climate engineering to be governed fairly. Fair governance structures have to address the geographically unequally distributed drawbacks and uncertainties of CE strategies by providing opportunities for upstream public engagement and for implementing democratic deliberation at different geographical scales. The governance structures should thus be adaptable to local, regional and international levels. We argue that on local to national levels, direct public engagement is essential for fair governance of the effects of CE strategies as people who are directly affected do know best how to assess risks and compensation provided. However, on an international level public engagement comes to its limits and stakeholders such as governments or international bodies should gain more responsibility; this is a form of governance with less direct involvement of those affected. In consequence, governance on the international level would rather be responsible for a regulation of CE strategies as such but not for the regulation of their more concrete effects in time and space.