Abstract
Global environmental assessments (GEAs) are expert-driven processes that inform decision-making on complex socio-ecological problems. Deepening challenges confront GEAs: they must anticipate ‘wicked’ issues and impacts, navigate differences and imbalances between kinds of expertise, practices, and communities, and map strategies with an eye to different ‘users’ in government, business, and civil society.
We explore how contestations over anticipatory assessment of novel climate interventions – carbon removal and solar geoengineering – challenge the broader conduct of assessments that feed into influential Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) reports. We use data from 125 qualitative interviews with foundational experts and technologists, speaking to: the novel demands of anticipating risks and governance, the fit with dominant IPCC-facing assessment processes, and the supplements and reforms called for. Due to the topic of this panel, we focus on carbon removal, but point out nuancing insights from solar geoengineering.
Our expert data reveals that key efforts at carbon removal and solar geoengineering assessment strongly leverage a mode of systems modeling (earth system and integrated assessment models) that has become dominant in mapping and communicating future climate impacts and mitigation strategies via IPCC reports. Both suites of climate intervention have become stress-tests for the capacity of modeling to assess socio-technical strategies with complex, systemic dimensions. Experts recognize but contest the degree to which modelling makes novel climate interventions appear feasible under simplistic, optimized constraints – entrenching partial depictions of benefit and risk, idealized pathways, and technical expertise.
However, experts also challenge this mode of model-centric expertises and practices. Exploring societal dimensions demand new modes of disciplinary expertise, qualitative and deliberative practices, and stakeholder inclusion that modelling processes struggle to incorporate. We show that these expert contestations reflect and entrench multiple fault-lines: over the evolving functions of the IPCC as a scientific advisory body vis-a-vis policy action and public controversy, between different practices and expert communities of its Working Groups, and between debates targeted at the landscaping reform of global environmental assessments. Our focus is therefore not on carbon removal or solar geoengineering in themselves, nor on how dominant assessments have shaped our understandings of these proposals. Rather, we treat them as case studies that reflect new demands for anticipatory assessment in the climate regime, and for GEAs more broadly.
We explore how contestations over anticipatory assessment of novel climate interventions – carbon removal and solar geoengineering – challenge the broader conduct of assessments that feed into influential Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) reports. We use data from 125 qualitative interviews with foundational experts and technologists, speaking to: the novel demands of anticipating risks and governance, the fit with dominant IPCC-facing assessment processes, and the supplements and reforms called for. Due to the topic of this panel, we focus on carbon removal, but point out nuancing insights from solar geoengineering.
Our expert data reveals that key efforts at carbon removal and solar geoengineering assessment strongly leverage a mode of systems modeling (earth system and integrated assessment models) that has become dominant in mapping and communicating future climate impacts and mitigation strategies via IPCC reports. Both suites of climate intervention have become stress-tests for the capacity of modeling to assess socio-technical strategies with complex, systemic dimensions. Experts recognize but contest the degree to which modelling makes novel climate interventions appear feasible under simplistic, optimized constraints – entrenching partial depictions of benefit and risk, idealized pathways, and technical expertise.
However, experts also challenge this mode of model-centric expertises and practices. Exploring societal dimensions demand new modes of disciplinary expertise, qualitative and deliberative practices, and stakeholder inclusion that modelling processes struggle to incorporate. We show that these expert contestations reflect and entrench multiple fault-lines: over the evolving functions of the IPCC as a scientific advisory body vis-a-vis policy action and public controversy, between different practices and expert communities of its Working Groups, and between debates targeted at the landscaping reform of global environmental assessments. Our focus is therefore not on carbon removal or solar geoengineering in themselves, nor on how dominant assessments have shaped our understandings of these proposals. Rather, we treat them as case studies that reflect new demands for anticipatory assessment in the climate regime, and for GEAs more broadly.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Event | 2022 Toronto Conference on Earth System Governance: Governing accelerated transitions: justice, creativity, and power in a transforming world - Toronto, Canada Duration: 20 Oct 2022 → 24 Oct 2022 |
Conference
Conference | 2022 Toronto Conference on Earth System Governance |
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Country/Territory | Canada |
City | Toronto |
Period | 20/10/22 → 24/10/22 |