The politics of uncertainty

The politics of uncertainty











Governance is a word on everyone’s lips
these days, and for good reason. Global governance is certainly not
getting any easier, with destructive financial ripples, inscrutable oil
prices, surging food costs, and unsettling national uprisings. These
familiar concerns remind us that even long-established governance
systems, with rich historic experience to draw from, are increasingly
caught unprepared by the rapidly changing social, political and
technological realities of our new century.

Now against this backdrop, try to design a new international regime
that can head off dangerous human interference with the climate system
without exacerbating the multitude of other looming calamities which are
barely being managed already. With virtually no historic experience to
draw upon, forecasts about how climate policies would actually impact
those tender bits of our global society – such as jobs, energy supplies
and food production – appear at best uncertain. And that’s before
contesting predictions from differing political camps are washed into
the mix. In this context, the continuing lack of a global climate deal,
while no less disastrous for our planet’s future, is sadly somewhat
understandable.

The sense of dismayed ‘inevitablism’ about climate change evoked by
such thinking has been a key factor in bringing the notion of
geoengineering into scientific and public prominence. Some hope this
might make the climate challenge more manageable, both by limiting the
downside risks and costs and – just maybe – by frightening societies
into reducing their carbon emissions (because the prospect of having to
geoengineer our global climate is quite scary)...!

But as with many well-intentioned notions, it raises more questions than it answers, including:
• Who will decide when and how much of which type of geoengineering is necessary? What happens when not everyone agrees?
• If societies do start to feel protected against climate risk, will
that reduce the incentive for them to curb carbon emissions – an action
which would address that risk in the first place?
• How would the climate and social changes brought about by
geoengineering impact other key issues which societies are increasingly
wrestling with?

These questions underpin the new governance challenge that comes with
the emergence of geoengineering technologies.Part technology
management, part climate policy and part international affairs, it is
spiced with all the same complex interdependencies alluded to above for
climate change alone. And there is also the added complexity (at least
for solar geoengineering) that fast unilateral action appears
plausible and cheap for many nations, but could carry with it highly
uncertain global climatic consequences.

Attempting to predict how the future will unfold is not a good basis
for designing a governance framework: it can lead to myopic thinking
about the variety of situations this might have to cope with. That said,
thinking through a spectrum of quasi-plausible future scenarios can be
a powerful way of getting to grips with the complex dynamics that a
governance system may need to grapple with. Take, for example, the
hypothetical scenario described in a news feature from 2031:

Emergency UN Session Convened StratoShield Fleet Continues Sulphur Injections
Even as an emergency session of the UN Security Council (UNSC) begins
today in New York, the 20 aircraft currently comprising the so-called
‘StratoShield Fleet’ are continuing their daily sorties into the upper
atmosphere.

Around 100,000 tonnes of sulphate aerosols have now been dispersed
during the Fleet’s first four months of operation. The UNSC session
takes place against a background of growing consensus among experts that
the technology is indeed working. The UN’s own specialist monitoring
group concluded that the coalition of 23 countries actively managing the
Fleet has demonstrated that it can fulfil its stated goal of
“returning global radiative forcing to 2000 levels within three years”.
The coalition claims that achieving this goal will reduce global
temperatures to averages similar to the ‘00s (in other words, around
0.7˚C cooler than those of the last five years). But critics point out
this will only be achieved by dramatically increasing the dispersal rate
of stratospheric aerosols, to between two and three million tonnes per
year, and that the consequences of such cooling will not be all
positive. After heated public exchanges between Chinese, Indian and
Russian officials over the past month, observers fear that any notable
increase in the dispersal rate could escalate tensions into an economic
or even military stand-off.

The UNSC itself is divided. Seven of the 24 current members sponsor or
support the Fleet’s activities, four oppose it, and the remainder are,
for now, cautiously neutral. Officials from the European Union, which
called for the session, say their main goal is to “promote agreement on
the major issues at stake” amidst the stream of conflicting political
and scientific statements flowing weekly from national governments,
scientific bodies and NGOs.

Backed by supporters of the Fleet’s activities, including the 39
countries of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), Brazil and
China will open the session by recounting several widely publicised
findings of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report. They are expected to
focus on the economic and social damages now being attributed to
specific climate change impacts, particularly in the least developed
countries. In particular, they will point to the fact that the number of
registered climate refugees has now topped the two million mark. And
they are sure to highlight the latest sea level index, which is now
reading 18cm over the norm – largely due, experts say, to increasing
losses from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.
Strong opposition is expected from Russia and Canada, both heavy
backers of the multinational Arctic Petroleum Consortium. Over the past
eight years, the APC has invested upwards of $500 billion in developing
the far north’s energy reserves. However, speculators have raised
concerns that up to half of these investments might become unviable if
the Fleet’s global cooling effect were to eventually cause a resurgence
of Arctic sea ice. This speculation has already driven oil futures back
over $300 per barrel.

It was partly concern over tightening global energy supply back in the
mid-20s that prompted Canada, Russia, India and South Africa to walk
out of talks on the Arctic cooling experiments proposed by the (now
defunct) International Solar Geoengineering Research Collaborative.
Today, India and South Africa are expected to align with the majority of
Security Council members who fall publically into the ‘sceptical but
undecided’ camp. These countries are broadly pressing for answers on how
significantly reducing radiative forcing might impact various
long-standing concerns, while acknowledging the negative impacts climate
change is already having. Food and energy prices will be among the
hottest topics. But other issues too are expected to surface in the
discussions, from biodiversity loss toimmigration pressures, and the
fate of climate-sensitive national infrastructure investments.


One wildcard at the Council will be the United States. Here, embattled
President Gabriel Hernandez is still attempting to negotiate a
compromise between the highly polarised energy and climate interests,
currently fighting each other to a standstill in Congress and the
courts. One senior administration official, venting anonymously, told
us: “This domestic and geopolitical mess would have been a hell of a lot
easier to manage if we’d started seriously curbing carbon emissions in
the 2010s, rather than late last decade!

This scenario hardly depicts the sort of positive "green future" that
we would hope for. In fact, those of us thinking carefully about how to
govern geoengineering research and technology development rather hope
that prudent forethought can help avoid similar situations. But it
highlights important drivers – some of which are extremely difficult to
predict and impossible to control – that will inevitably shape how,
when and if geoengineering evolves from concept to reality.
The most obvious of these is the revolution of climate change itself.
If climate impacts over the next two decades are mild, there is
unlikely to be much pressure for active deployment of geoengineering.
If, by contrast, we see increasingly extreme weather, along with rapid
sea level rise, it will surely rise quickly up the political agenda.
This will particularly be the case if we reach one or more ‘climate
tipping points’. These are hard-to-predict thresholds beyond which
parts of the climate system undergo rapid non-linear change – such as
melting permafrost releasing vast quantities of methane, a highly potent
greenhouse gas.

We can expect such scenarios would have increasingly bad net
consequences for global societies, but our understanding of exactly how
and for whom they will be bad (and also who might benefit in the short
term) remains sketchy. Even sketchier are guesses about how domestic
populations and national governments 20 years hence would respond to the
multitude of pressures such events could induce.


Nonetheless, whether and which countries develop the political will to
launch a serious geoengineering effort will clearly be a core driver of
how these technologies evolve. One suggestion, unsubtly laced
throughout the above scenario, is that such political calculations are
unlikely to be based purely on long-term altruism. Important and
realistic near-term considerations, such as jobs, energy prices and the
cost of food, seem likely to be as dominant in climate related
decisions two decades from now as they are today. Any governance
framework for deploying geoengineering needs to recognise this.

For both these important drivers – climate consequences and political
landscapes – broad projections into the future are possible. But just
how complex the reality of both (and their interactions) will be cannot
be fully appreciated until we’re living right in the middle of it. A
perfect reminder of how uncertain even the immediate future can be is
the recent and unpredicted Tunisian revolution – sparked in part by
protests over rising food prices – and the unprecedented political
uprisings it ignited in Egypt and throughout the region.

So, accepting inevitable uncertainty where it exists, how can prudent
forethought still help develop a governance system for geoengineering
that may just safeguard us from undesirable futures, such as our 2031
scenario?
First, scientific research can provide considerable insight into what
geoengineering technologies could and could not be useful for. Future
political decisions about using geoengineering will be based largely on
how useful it is seen in addressing whatever climate-derived threats
are being felt at that time. Building robust, internationally accepted
scientific knowledge about the potential benefits and risks of
geoengineering technologies is therefore a critical step towards
ensuring such perceptions are grounded in reality. This reduces the risk
that misguided experiments with our global climate could be launched
due to either naïve optimism or political opportunism winning over
public opinion.

At the same time, how that research is conducted, and by whom, will be
at last as important as the knowledge the research generates. We are
just entering the early days of serious geoengineering research and
technology development. If we can create frameworks for global
transparency and inclusiveness now, it can lay foundations – normative
and institutional – that could make it much harder for a subset of
nations to launch geoengineering actions that disregard global welfare.
In other words, whatever governance system (formal or informal) is
established for geoengineering research in the next few years will set
important precedents for how the future is governed.

In this context, building robust traditions of transparency and
inclusiveness also means more than just international collaboration
between scientists. The best foundation for future political cooperation
on geoengineering is a broad and inclusive conversation that includes
scientists, policymakers and publics around the world. Such a
conversation would have two important goals.

First, to create a shared conception of what geoengineering is, what we
know about it and, crucially, what we do not know, at any given time.
This will help politicians and the public understand the risks and
limits of geoengineering, and why geoengineering does not reduce our
need to mitigate global carbon emissions.


Second, to help policymakers and scientists understand how the public
connects the idea and potential realities of geoengineering to their
daily lives. This is not meant as PR for geoengineering technologies.
Quite the opposite: it is needed to ensure that the individual and
cultural issues most important to our global societies are carefully
woven into the governance framework for emerging geoengineering
research.

Anticipating future challenges is difficult in any policy arena, and
especially in one with technologies that are in the earliest days of
their exploration and development. The approach outlined above can help
us prepare as best we can. Playing through a range of possible future
scenarios can also help us develop governance systems that are as robust
as possible against undesirable outcomes.

But in the end, will such prudent forethought be enough to make the
potential benefits of geoengineering outweigh the potential risks?
Sadly, there are no guarantees. Geoengineering concepts and research do
bring with them new risks, and this is certainly a thought that rests
heavy in my mind when I write or speak about this topic.

However, the risks we already run with our global climate system are
profound and increasing. Human societies and natural ecosystems alike
could come under unprecedented threat from climate change this century,
and thus far we have collectively failed to limit that threat. If
geoengineering can potentially provide another recourse for future
generations, then careful exploration of these ideas, with appropriate
early governance, seems to me the best option, on balance. Of course,
none of this changes the fact that limiting the threat of climate change
through mitigation is still our best option to begin with!


Source:-

http://www.cigionline.org/articles/2011/03/politics-uncertainty