Geoengineering at the Arctic Circle
I first heard about Solar Radiation Modification (SRM)—a form of geoengineering meant to address climate change through planetary cooling—during the 2023 Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland, at a networking lunch for youth working in environmentalism. My Master’s thesis in Anthropology at the University of Iceland focused on Ungir Umhverfissinnar (English translation: the Icelandic Youth Environmentalist Association), which I (from the United States) had joined the board of both as a climate activist and engaged anthropologist. During my interviews and participant observation with the organization, geoengineering had never come up until my colleague from Ungir Umhverfissinnar and I were approached by representatives from Operaatio Arktis (OA).[1] Intent on “[preserving] the polar ice caps and preventing global tipping points,” OA has followed prominent research advocates in fostering discussion around an SRM technique called Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI).[2] SAI aims to reflect sunlight back into space instead of trapping the energy on Earth through the injection of sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere (as shown in the diagram below).[3]
Illustration of the different solar climate intervention techniques.
Chelsea Thompson, NOAA/CIRES (https://research.noaa.gov/News/Scientist-Profile/ArtMID/536/ArticleID/2758/Study-of-wildfire-plumes-provide-insights-into-methods-that-might-cool-the-planet)
Anton and Ellen, two OA members, told me that given Finland’s position within the Arctic, members of their organization are driven by a very concrete and immediate fear of losing their home. SAI is therefore particularly enticing because of its potential ability to cool the planet quickly and cheaply compared to the slow pace of greenhouse gas mitigation and removal efforts. It is from this sense of emergency and urgency that geoengineering became part of their sociotechnical imaginaries, although they are also mindful of geoengineering’s possible risks. Sociotechnical imaginaries are, “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology.”[4] Geoengineering’s growing role in shaping sociotechnical imaginaries has been the subject of severe criticism from scientists, activists, and others concerned about the governance and justice dilemmas implicit within geoengineering.[5] In the absence of an appropriate governing institution, de facto governance (i.e., governance that does not proceed through “proper” channels) of geoengineering has occurred through its inclusion in a series of high-level scientific reports without being subjected to in-depth political questioning about how geoengineering will affect or be affected by notions of justice, power, and responsibility. This governance vacuum has excluded youth and Indigenous Peoples (including Indigenous youth) alike from discourses around geoengineering, a common theme in international environmental governance. Consequently, youth activists (both geoengineering skeptic and advocates) should increase their efforts to make these discussions meaningful to Indigenous Peoples and more generally consider increasing their collaborations with Indigenous Peoples outside of formal environmental governance structures.
De Facto Governance and the Global-Local Nexus of Environmental Governance
The only existing international governance mechanisms adjacent to or directly dealing with geoengineering are the Environmental Modification Convention of 1977 (ENMOD) and a partial moratorium from the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. However, ENMOD was not intended to include geoengineering under its purview and only covers the intentional use of weather modification technologies for military or hostile use in response to rumored US plans during the Vietnam War. In addition to the potential for geoengineering to be used to further war efforts (i.e., causing floods or raising temperatures to disrupt a hostile nation), governance scholars Frank Biermann, Jeroen Oomen, and Aarti Gupta, among others, are worried about three specific risks. First is geoengineering’s (and, in particular, SAI’s) possible unintended effects on both regional and global dynamics of the climatic system, a concern shared by activists and Indigenous Peoples who have opposed past plans for experimentation that do not first gain consent from the local Sámi people. Second is technological lock-in—the risk of scientists and/or governments proceeding with deploying geoengineering at scale after extensive research and investment, regardless of the consequences. And third is mitigation deterrence—the possibility of geoengineering distracting from the necessity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the source. Amidst all of these challenges, the conclusion of Biermann, Oomen, Gupta, and the other authors and supporting scientists of the non-binding and purely aspirational Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement is that no international institution has the proper characteristics to govern both the military and environmental/climatic dimensions of geoengineering.[6]
Gupta, in collaboration with Ina Möller, has argued that de facto governance of geoengineering, which they call “climate engineering” or CE, is already underway.[7] In their opinion, high-level assessments from the Royal Society and others constructed “CE as an object of governance through demarcating and categorizing this emerging field of inquiry… [and] normalizing and institutionalizing CE research (and CE research communities).”[8] Rather than political assessments over whether geoengineering should be developed or how these technologies might affect dynamics of justice, power, and responsibility, the framing used to present geoengineering in these high-level assessments by scientific authorities has had “the effect of depoliticizing the object of governance.”[9] After becoming the subject of de facto governance, geoengineering was mentioned in the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report as a potential emergency solution to climate change, thrusting it into the spotlight.[10] The IPCC is a body of scientists from around the world chosen to produce scientific reports for countries on the status of various cutting-edge technologies and scientific understandings related to climate change for incorporation into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations.[11] Because IPCC reports are intended for national governments, they are subjected to the interests of nation states. The history of UNFCCC negotiations shows that governments and international institutions are predisposed to solutions like geoengineering that act within dominant sociotechnical imaginaries and exclude the uncomfortable political questions identified by Gupta and Möller.[12] This flawed governance process led me to focus my PhD research in anthropology on geoengineering and to understand how to better incorporate political questions into the governance of geoengineering.[13] Through my connections in OA, I soon became acquainted with the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering (SGD).
Seeking to increase the “democratization of the future,” SGD has created a blueprint for conducting “future making” workshops with Arctic youth based on the core idea that “[by] using (critical) futures studies and futures literacy, we can challenge the status quo and invite a diversity of voices to imagine and redefine what lies ahead.”[14] I was the single participant in a much-shortened version of their workshop, during which I was prompted to imagine my desired long-term futures and whether SRM would fit into those future scenarios. Inviting a diverse range of approaches, the Arctic future workshops are attempts to challenge the dominant frames of reference with alternatives that draw on future studies, the social sciences, and Indigenous Knowledge (IK). However, these alternatives are unintelligible to, and difficult to include in, IPCC reports or other authoritative bodies that structure UN level negotiations.[15] OA, SGD, and similar organizations are given some standing as observer organizations to the UNFCCC but have minimal influence on the process itself.[16]
SGD’s work to attain this small, but important, level of influence was through the collaboration of youth activists with Indigenous Nations and countries in the Global South as described by Naveeda Khan.[17] This strategy should be used in other forums—such as in the geoengineering conversation—and outside of official institutional settings to shift the pre-framing of discussions that do not “…allow Indigenous people to meaningfully bring the issues that matter to them to the table.”[18] Kyle Powys-Whyte, a well-known Indigenous scholar writing on environmental politics, suggests that “non-Indigenous persons shouldn’t actually be asking to bring Indigenous persons to the table. Rather, they should be asking how to make the discussions meaningful to Indigenous peoples.”[19] Based on my experiences in environmentalism, I think this is a challenge that should be taken up by youth activists and STS scholars alike.
Conclusion
The de facto governance of geoengineering—a consequence of both focusing on climate change as a global phenomenon and the construction of institutions like the IPCC and UNFCCC—has already proven to skirt political questions and circumvent efforts to assess whether geoengineering should be included in our long-term visions of the future. Rather, the question posed to grassroots environmental organizations and the countries most vulnerable to climate change or with the least international influence alike seems to be, “How will geoengineering technologies, when they are inevitably developed, fit into the future?” Supporting the work of Indigenous Peoples who have prioritized gaining sovereignty and the ability to act on their own terms over international climate governance should be the priority of any group or individual concerned about questions of justice with regard to technologies like geoengineering. This is especially true as proponents of geoengineering have increasingly justified their interest in the technology in order to reduce the effects of climate change on Indigenous Peoples, while the terms for a proper discussion have not yet been established.[20]
Notes
[1] OA was formed in 2022 and its members are Finnish youth who were former members of Extinction Rebellion in Finland and had grown hopeless with the pace of environmental action in Finland.
[2] Operaatio Arktis, accessed September 4, 2024, https://www.operaatioarktis.fi/.; SAI advocates include Dr. David Keith (Professor and Founding Faculty Director, Climate Systems Engineering Initiative, University of Chicago), Dr. Jesse L. Reynolds (The Degrees Initiative), and Dr. Hugh Hunt (Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair).
[3] Frank Biermann et al., “Solar Geoengineering: The Case for an International Non‐use Agreement,” WIREs Climate Change 13, no. 3 (January 17, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.754.
[4] Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016), 3.
[5] Frank Biermann et al., “Solar Geoengineering.”
[6] Ibid.
[7] Aarti Gupta and Ina Möller, “De Facto Governance: How Authoritative Assessments Construct Climate Engineering as an Object of Governance,” Environmental Politics 28, no. 3 (April 9, 2018): 480–501, https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1452373.
[8] Ibid., 480.
[9] Ibid., 490. Emphasis in the original.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Kari de Pryck and Mike Hulme, A Critical Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Personal Communication with Julia Reindl.
[15] Kari de Pryck and Mike Hulme, A Critical Assessment.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Khan, Naveeda Ahmed, In quest of a shared planet: Negotiating climate from the Global South (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023).
[18] J. P. Sapinski, Holly Jean Buck, and Andreas Malm, Has It Come to This?: The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering on the Brink (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021), 74.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank David Keith and Jeroen Oomen for their engaging conversation that inspired this piece; the youth environmentalists I have worked alongside or learned from, especially my friends in Operatiio Arktis, Ungir Umhverfissinnar, and SDG; and finally, the editors of Platypus for their fantastic guidance.
This post was curated by Contributing Editor Cydney Seigerman.
