Last month, the UN Environment Assembly failed to come to an agreement about governing geoeningeering. But this is a topic that will be brought up more and more as climate change continues.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I am Ross Kenyon. I’m lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Janos Pasztor. He’s executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative, also known as C2G2. I asked Janos to be here with me because I saw a very interesting article recently from Jesse Reynolds in Legal Planet that was called, Governing Geoengineering at the United Nations? No, at least not now. Janos, I was wondering if you could catch us up with the politics of geoengineering at the UN and what is happening right now?
Janos Pasztor: Well, thank you, Ross, for talking with me. And first of all, I think it’s important to say that what’s happened at the UN Environment Assembly, UNEA, is actually quite positive because finally, governments were discussing this issue at pretty high level. There was a pretty intense negotiation and engagement. By the governments themselves and also by some of the civil society representatives who were there, which is precisely what is needed. Because so far, most of the discussion about these issues has been taking place in the scientific and academic circles and not so much in the policy space.
So even though they were not able to come to an agreement on the actual content of the resolution, which is a pity, the fact that they had this conversation is a good step forward.
Ross Kenyon: I agree. When I think about governance, and feel free to correct me here, the governance of geoengineering, whether that’s solar radiation management, whether we’re increasing the reflectivity of the earth, or sometimes carbon removal is also lumped into geoengineering, which we’ll talk about in Yes, absolutely.
Janos Pasztor: I agree, but you have just raised one of the key challenges that we face, and that’s the word geoengineering. Because the word geoengineering means many different things to different people. And in fact, we found in our work that it is confusing, and we tried to move away from using geoengineering because it’s not helpful. For some, geoengineering, as it was originally defined many years ago in various international processes, Includes both carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification. But for others, geoengineering is only used to cover solar geoengineering or solar radiation modification.
And yet for others, when you talk about carbon dioxide removal, some aspects which you would put under carbon dioxide removal, such as nature-based solutions or even carbon capture products, And storage are not necessarily considered by everybody to be part of carbon dioxide removal or not. So we have a problem on definitions. And I think that was one of the challenges that we saw in Nairobi at the UN Environment Assembly, that it meant different things to different people. And therefore, people were not really ready to make a serious decision. But then, clearly, when it comes to decision making about these, then the issues are quite different.
For solar radiation modification, there’s a big question because one doesn’t even know where to start a discussion in which intergovernmental setting, yet the impacts could be global. So who decides on something that would have global impacts, both potentially positive in terms of reduction of temperatures, but also in terms of potential negative impacts? Who decides when? And how does one actually set up such an activity? Very challenging governance issues that will take many years to discuss. When it comes to carbon dioxide removal, those issues, I wouldn’t say they’re simple, but they’re definitely simpler.
And at least there are existing governance processes such as the UN Framework Commission on Climate Change, which has a mandate for removals where one can discuss those issues.
Ross Kenyon: Indeed. And the politics of this recent event I found quite interesting because there’s a proposal that was withdrawn merely to discuss this, but it appears that the United States and Saudi Arabia vetoed it or somehow blocked discussion of it. We have Silicon Valley. There’s sort of a tech vibe here to the entire country. And I think the United States would very much like a techno fix. So it was interesting to see that this is blocked. And then the countries that supported talking about this tend to be ones which acknowledge that climate change is quite serious.
Yet there is also internal politics because many activists tend to oppose carte blanche, all geoengineering, or it’s just politically less popular than more natural solutions or avoided emissions or some such. Would you say that’s a fair summation?
Janos Pasztor: Well, I think it’s important to realize that most countries really haven’t sorted out their position on these technologies. And it’s too early to say that they’re for or against it. Yes, countries have been thinking about and have established positions on climate change, whether they agree with it or not, and what they should do about it. So that has happened. But specifically on Large-scale carbon dioxide removal, or for that matter, potentially solar radiation modification, they haven’t figured out what to do. And in many cases, one of the problems is that they simply don’t know enough about it.
And of course, there are exceptions to that, but on the whole, in our work, we’ve been talking to a lot of governments And also civil society organizations. And many simply don’t have enough information they don’t understand. And you saw that happening in Nairobi during the UNIA negotiations as well. And it’s ironic that the resolution was actually proposing to generate more information about these technologies that would have been helpful to know in order to even consider these issues. So it’s a kind of a chicken and egg situation. But nevertheless, that is clearly the one important conclusion that one can draw from that negotiation is that the governments simply do not have enough information, do not have enough knowledge and understanding about these technologies to be able to have clear policies and therefore have clear decisions on them.
Now, one thing that you said is interesting, which I’d like to come back to. When it comes to solar radiation modification, you don’t actually have to believe climate change, that there is anthropogenic climate change. All you need to believe is that temperatures are rising and you’re going to apply it. Solar radiation modification to cool the temperature. So I don’t think it’s necessarily an obvious situation that you have to believe in anthropogenic climate change in order to consider or actually deploy solar radiation modification technology.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, yes, I agree with you there. In fact, I’ve always thought the AGW discussion was a bit of a red herring. It didn’t matter if it was volcanoes or something else. I think humans need to come to a position where we can master the carbon cycle and start taking a more active role in the planet, given how many expectations are built around things continuing basically as they are. Janos, how relevant is UN action on geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal? Is this the nexus where the decisions will get made that will impact these nascent industries?
Or is it going to come from somewhere else? I know you’ve worked in the UN for a long time. So maybe you have some extra insight there.
Janos Pasztor: So I think that activities in the private sector and also in the quasi-private sector, such as in academic institutions on carbon dioxide removal probably will continue with or without discussions in the United Nations. But at the same time, I think it’s important that in fora like the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change, that is where countries come together and agree on, for example, how to measure So that they have a common framework for measuring, for monitoring, for reporting. And these things, if everybody goes their own way, it will hinder progress.
So that’s the kind of discussions in the United Nations that can have a very substantial impact on the speed and the direction of the development of carbon dioxide removal activities. The kind of situation that might arise for carbon dioxide removal is that there will be countries that would be prepared to undertake certain carbon dioxide removal activities because they may have appropriate geoclimatic situations in their countries, but they may not have the technology. So there needs to be some kind of international cooperation, some kind of discussions about getting finance across borders, Helping innovation.
These are also very important elements of governance that, again, can happen in United Nations-sponsored discussions and then agreements. And that, again, could have very substantial impacts on the speed and the scale of carbon dioxide removal activities.
Ross Kenyon: Terrific. Well, Giannis, if someone wanted to learn more about your organization and research on this topic, where might be a good place to start?
Janos Pasztor: Well, a good start would be on our website, c2g2.net. And you’ll find there all kinds of blogs. We write a few blogs here and there on current issues. You can get on our mailing list. We have a few policy briefs that we have started developing, a few commission papers, etc. So we’re a relatively new initiative, but we have started producing such information products and there will a lot more coming in the next few months related to our work.
Ross Kenyon: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for being here with me, Janos Pasztor, Executive Director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative C2G2. Thank you, Janos.
Janos Pasztor: You’re most welcome. Take care. Bye-bye.
