The long-term objective of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative (C2G2) is to encourage dialogues on and to develop governance framework(s) for climate geoengineering.
Climate Geoengineering (CGE) is defined as deliberate, intentional planetary-scale interventions in the Earth system to counteract climate change. There is increasing interest in CGE as the mitigation challenge of staying well below 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise—let alone 1.5 degrees—becomes more apparent. In the foreseeable future, governments or even non-state actors could turn to CGE options as a last resort or as means to buy time. Yet there is a considerable lack of understanding of the governance requirements of CGE. Furthermore, no comprehensive governance framework(s) exist for addressing CGE—technologies that fundamentally require multilateral governance approaches.
There is hence an urgent need for broad, inclusive global governance discussions regarding the research, possible testing and deployment decision-making process for CGE technologies that have significant, long-term and planetary-wide consequences for this and future generations. The C2G2 Initiative will address these issues by seeking to enlarge, accelerate and shift the discussion on CGE governance from academia to the intergovernmental policy community through systematic engagement with government representatives, intergovernmental and international non-governmental organizations, as well as other non-state actors.
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