An Ethical Framework for Climate Intervention Research: Keeping Pace with Rapidly Evolving Needs

Climate change requires urgent and coordinated global action. Increasingly, the world is considering technology-based climate intervention approaches, often called geoengineering, for many different potential applications—from terrestrial, to oceans, to stratospheric research areas of interest. Many of these approaches are untested and the consequences are not yet well understood. While climate intervention research has been justified as necessary to expand the range of options available to policy makers in the future, many questions remain on efficacy, risks and potential harm versus potential benefits.

The need for an ethical framework to help guide this area of growing research interest has never been more acute, as both governmental and private sector funding has accelerated in this area over the past 18 months. This presentation will review recent developments in this field of climate geoengineering research and the continued challenges and opportunities for ensuring ethical research governance practices, in addition to the need to address emissions reduction.

We will discuss the foundations for the AGU Ethical Framework Principles for Climate Intervention Research (now available in 10 languages) the key principles, the process by which they were developed, and the ongoing process for global dissemination and engagement.