Switzerland wants to advance global talks on whether controversial solar geoengineering techniques should be used to compensate for climate change by cooling down the earth.
It is proposing to create the first United Nations expert group to “examine risks and opportunities” of solar radiation management (SRM), a suite of largely untested technologies aimed at dimming the sun.
The panel would be made up of experts appointed by member states of the UN’s environment programme (Unep) and representatives of international scientific bodies, according to a draft resolution submitted by Switzerland and seen by Climate Home.
Governments will negotiate and vote on the proposal at Unep’s annual meeting due to start next week in Nairobi, Kenya. It has been formally endorsed by Senegal, Georgia, Monaco and Guinea.
A Swiss government spokesperson told Climate Home that SRM is “a new topic on the political agenda” and Switzerland is “committed to ensuring that states are informed about these technologies, in particular about possible risks and cross-border effects”.
Split scientific opinions
Solar geoengineering is a deeply contested topic and scientists are divided over whether it should be explored at all as a potential solution.
Ines Camilloni, a climatology professor at the University of Buenos Aires, welcomed Switzerland’s proposal, saying the UN “is in a good position to facilitate equitable, transparent, and inclusive discussions”.
“There is an urgent need to continue researching the benefits and risks of SRM to guide decisions around research activities and deployment”, she told Climate Home.
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But Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, head of climate science at Climate Analytics, says he is concerned about that prospect.
“The risk of such an initiative is that it elevates SRM as a real solution and contributes to the normalisation of something that is still very premature and hypothetical from a scientific perspective”, he added. “You need to be careful about unintended consequences and consider the risks of opening a Pandora’s box”.
An open letter signed by more than 400 scientists in 2022 called for an international “non-use agreement” on solar geoengineering. It also said United Nations bodies, including Unep, “are all incapable of guaranteeing equitable and effective multilateral control over the deployment of solar geoengineering technologies at planetary scale”.
Poorly understood risks
Long touted as a futuristic climate hack, solar geoengineering has risen in prominence in recent years as the prospect of curbing emissions enough to limit global warming to 1.5C has faded.
The technologies aim to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. This could be achieved by pumping aerosols into the high atmosphere or by whitening clouds.
Its supporters say it could be a relatively cheap and fast way to counter extreme heat. But it would only temporarily reduce the impact of rising emissions, without tackling the root causes.
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The regional effects of manipulating the weather are hard to predict and large uncertainties over wider climate, social and economic implications remain.
Solar geoengineering could “introduce a widespread range of new risks to people and ecosystems, which are not well-understood”, the IPCC’s scientists said in their latest assessment of climate science.
Its critics argue that putting the SRM option on the table undermines existing climate policies and relieves pressure on polluters to reduce emissions as quickly as possible. There are also questions about how long this technology would be needed and what happens after it is stopped.
Space for discussion
In its proposal to the Unep assembly, Switzerland acknowledges the “potential global risks and adverse impacts”.
The 25-people-strong group would first be tasked with writing a comprehensive scientific report on solar geoengineering.
But the main goal would be to establish “a space for an informed discussion” about research on the potential use of SRM, giving the possibility for future decisions on how that should be governed, according to an accompanying technical note seen by Climate Home.
It is not the first time Switzerland brings a resolution on solar geoengineering to the Unep summit. In 2019, its attempt to get countries to agree to the development of a governance framework failed as a result of opposition from Donald Trump’s USA and Saudi Arabia – who didn’t want restrictions on geoengineering.
Calls for more research
Last year, Unep produced an “independent expert review” of the subject, concluding that “far more research” is needed “before any consideration for potential deployment” of SRM.
A Unep spokesperson said the exact characteristics of the group proposed by Switzerland would need to be negotiated at the upcoming summit. But, if approved, it would differ from any previous panel “because it would have a clear mandate from member states” with experts directly appointed by them.
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Ines Camilloni was one of the authors of last year’s UNEP report. She says “managing the risks of climate change requires a portfolio of policy responses”, of which mitigation and adaptation would be the most important and urgent.
But she added that “SRM has been proposed as a complementary approach” and more research is needed to weigh its benefits and risks against the impact of adverse climate scenarios.
A panel of leaders called the Overshoot Commission also recommended last year that governments expand research into solar geoengineering while placing a moratorium on large-scale experiments outdoors.
A rogue SRM experiment conducted by a US startup in Mexico led the Mexican government to announce a ban on solar geoengineering in January 2023.
‘Precautionary approach’
Mary Church, a campaigner at the CEnter for International Environmental Law, says “it’s hard to see what could be gained from establishing an expert group under Unep”.
“There’s a real risk that such a group could undermine the existing regulatory framework and inadvertently provide legitimacy for solar geoengineering technology development and experimentation”.
Countries should instead “take a precautionary approach, commit to non-use, and prioritise a fast, fair and funded phase out of fossil fuels”, she added.
The post Switzerland proposes first UN expert group on solar geoengineering appeared first on Climate Home News.
Switzerland proposes first UN expert group on solar geoengineering
Climate Change
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Countries attending a first-of-its-kind fossil-fuel summit have been asked to consider “action recommendations” such as “halting all new fossil-fuel expansion” and “reject[ing] gas as a bridging fuel”, according to a preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief.
Around 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia from 24-29 April to debate ways to “transition away” from fossil fuels, in the face of worsening climate change and sky-high oil prices.
The talks come after a large group of nations campaigned for, but ultimately failed, to get all countries to formally agree to a “roadmap” away from fossil fuels at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.
The nations gathering in Santa Marta for the summit co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.
Ahead of country officials arriving in Santa Marta, a global group of academics will gather in the city this week to present and discuss the latest scientific evidence on fossil-fuel phaseout, which will then inform debate among policymakers.
A preliminary scientific “synthesis report” circulated to governments attending the talks and seen by Carbon Brief offers 12 “action insights” for countries to consider, along with a wide range of “action recommendations”.
These recommendations range from “phase out subsidies on fossil-fuel production and consumption” to “kick-start a forum to develop a legal framework to ban fossil-fuel advertisements”.
‘Rapid’ assessment
The preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief – titled, “Action insights for the Santa Marta process” – is the result of some rapid work by an “ad-hoc” group of around 24 scientists.
It is designed to present governments attending the talks with concrete and actionable recommendations for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The preliminary version, which includes recommendations such as “halting all new fossil fuel expansion”, has already been circulated to governments, with a view that this could help them to prepare for the talks in advance.
It will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the academic segment of the Santa Marta talks, before a final version is made public towards the end of April, Carbon Brief understands.
The process to produce the report began shortly after the conclusion of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November, explains its lead author, Dr Friedrich Bohn, a research scientist and co-founder of the Earth Resilience Institute in Germany. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When [Brazil] announced there would be a Santa Marta conference led by Colombia and the Netherlands, I was sitting listening with a small group of scientists. We thought: ‘This is great news, but it should be supported by scientific expertise.’”
One of the members of Bohn’s group had a pre-existing relationship with the Colombian government, allowing a dialogue to quickly be established, he continues:
“In the beginning, the idea was to just write a peer-reviewed paper. But, because of this close connection to the Colombian government and some feedback from them, the synthesis paper evolved.”
The report came out of a “very rapidly evolved process” that relied on the “goodwill” and “enthusiasm” of the academics involved, adds coordinating author Prof Frank Jotzo, a professor of climate change economics at Australian National University. (Jotzo is a former Carbon Brief contributing editor.) He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s an attempt to get broad coverage on relevant topics from researchers with good expertise and reputation.”
The group of 24 scientists involved spent around two months compiling the “action insights” for the report, drawing on their expertise and the latest available research, says Jotzo.
Given the rapid nature of the report, it does not aim to be “completist”, has not been externally reviewed and did not follow a stringent process for author selection comparable to that used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, he adds.
The contributors to the report currently skew to the global north and include more men than women, adds Bohn.
‘Direct guidance’
In a departure from IPCC reports, the preliminary Santa Marta synthesis report offers “very direct guidance to action”, says Jotzo.
The report lists 12 “action insights”, each with three “action recommendations”. (The list was cut down from a shortlist of about 40-50 insights, Carbon Brief understands.)
One of the most striking in the draft is “action insight 5”, which says:
“Take immediate measures to prevent future emissions. Ban new fossil infrastructure, mandate deep methane cuts, accelerate electrification and inscribe fossil-fuel phase-down targets in NDCs [nationally determined contributions] and clean-energy pathways support to low and middle income countries (LMICs).”
The accompanying three “action recommendations” include “halting all new fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure projects ahead of a final investment decision”, “implementing deep, legally binding methane cuts in the energy sector” and “inscrib[ing] targets for fossil-fuel phase down, electrification and green exports in NDCs”.
(The draft report includes multiple references to “phasing out” and “phasing down” fossil fuels, rather than the “transition away from fossil fuels” language that was, ultimately, agreed by countries at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai in 2023.)
Another action insight says “public support for climate action is broadly underestimated and undermined by interest groups, but it can be strengthened by debunking greenwashing narratives”.
One recommendation for this insight is that nations “reject natural gas as a bridging technology and CCS [carbon capture and storage] techniques as scalable compensation”.
In a letter introducing the report to governments and civil society, the scientists note that making direct recommendations is a “challenge for our community”, but added:
“However, in the spirit of a constructive collaboration between science and policymaking, we allowed ourselves to identify some potential courses of action that our community would recommend for each particular issue – and we invite you to weigh these against your own circumstances and pick up whatever seems most useful for you and your colleagues.”
The prescriptiveness of the recommendations – something strictly prohibited in IPCC reports – was an explicit request from the Colombian government, Bohn says:
“The idea of actionable recommendations was introduced by the Colombian government.
“There was some discussion within the team about this. It’s a tricky area when you leave science and move to consultation. Therefore, we agreed, in the end, to call them ‘actionable recommendations’ and to make them as precise as possible, from the scientific perspective.”
Jotzo, a veteran of the IPCC process, tells Carbon Brief that it was “very liberating” to work on a report with a “free-form process”:
“The bulk of policy-related research is very readily deployed to recommendations pointing out what countries could do. The IPCC process, for example, just doesn’t allow that. As far as the summary for policymakers in the IPCC is concerned, it will usually be governments that filter out anything that could be interpreted as a specific recommendation.”
He adds that the hope is that some of the action insights might be reflected in the high-level segment of the Santa Marta conference:
“No one is under any illusions that governments will walk away from the Santa Marta conference and will have made a decision to implement recommendations one, seven and nine – or something like that. But it is a chance to insert directly applicable action points into national and plurilateral policy agendas.”
Colombia calling
The preliminary report will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the “pre-academic segment” of the Santa Marta talks.
This is taking place from 24-26 April, ahead of the “high-level segment” involving ministers and other policymakers from 28-29 April.
The pre-academic segment will also separately see the launch of a new advisory panel on fossil-fuel transition and a scientifically led roadmap for how Colombia can transition away from fossil fuels, Carbon Brief understands.
The high-level segment is expected to be attended by representatives from around 50 countries, including COP31 host Turkey and major oil-and-gas producers such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Norway.
Countries expected to attend account for one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government.
At the end of the conference, countries are due to release a report featuring a “menu of solutions” for transitioning away from fossil fuels, according to Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez Torres.
This report is in turn set to inform a global “roadmap” on transitioning away from fossil fuels being developed by the Brazilian COP30 presidency, which is due to be presented at COP31 in Turkey this November.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency offered to bring forward a “voluntary” fossil-fuel transition “roadmap” outside of the official COP process, after countries failed to formally agree to one during negotiations in Belém.
The post Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Pygmy Blue Whale Management Plan
To secure their approvals, Woodside had to develop a plan for how they would manage the significant risks to threatened green turtles if the project proceeds. We’ve had two independent scientists provide a technical assessment of Woodside’s management plan for whales and turtles and their findings are gobsmacking.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could make Scott Reef’s unique green turtles extinct.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could delay or prevent the population recovery of the endangered pygmy blue whales that rely on Scott Reef, heightening their extinction risk.
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Turtle Management Plan
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Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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