Developing an African Climate Intervention Research Coalition

With the 1.5^oC global warming target set to be breached in the next decade, and as the impacts of this warming across the world become more deleterious, Climate Intervention (CI) and in particular Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) will become the subject of global political discussion. While low latitude, developing countries have the most to gain or lose from CI and SRM, they are underrepresented in current discussions, however, decisions regarding development and implementation/rejection of SRM require that these countries be at the center of such conversations.

Preparing the African voice for this discussion is essential and requires a well-resourced and well-connected African research community that understands the regional impacts of global warming and how CI may mitigate or exacerbate these impacts. While there are many SRM research projects around Africa facilitated by the DEGREES Initiative, a coordinated CI research community does not yet exist.

Here we present results from a project that aims to transition the current loose research network into a well-structured CI and SRM research coalition, nurturing an expert SRM community in Africa over the next 5-10 years.

The main component of the project is a workshop that will bring together African CI and SRM researchers alongside representatives of the World Climate Research Programme, the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX-Africa) and International African research institutions. The workshop will discuss how to build, grow, and sustain a coalition of African SRM researchers, considering its research and capacity-building activities, its initial composition, and its structure. The workshop will also develop an initial roadmap of activities for the coalition and consider potential funding sources to support it. Furthermore, we will explore using a research hub model as a vehicle through which the coalition, its activities and growth is supported.

The insights and outcomes from these discussions will be synthesized into a white paper outlining the goals and principles of the coalition, with concrete recommendations for next steps. Key messages of the white paper will be presented in this session.

The work is pioneering and entrepreneurial and we know of no other efforts like this. In fact, we believe this would be the first continental scale SRM research coalition in the world, let alone in the Global South.