What about social justice and citizen participation?
Which actors are present in the discussion on OIF?
|
“I think that it just is really important to have some of that voice. [...] I think this is an ethical, justice and political issue and having civil society focus on those aspects is essential and the fact that they are there is a hallmark of the fact that this is a political issue. [...]
I think that the problems there lie in justice and equity issues. You could be significantly altering agricultural productivity and hydrological variability in parts of the globe where people have no say or no right to take part in the discussions about whether or not to do that. I don’t accept that Governments should be able to represent them, I think there’s a lot of people for whom that representative democracy doesn’t necessarily work. Fundamentally, my concern with OIF or solar radiation management (SRM) techniques involve ethics and social justice. There is a difference between action and inaction. Taking a positive action that takes such risks makes less than taking positive actions that are just hard to take but we understand that they involve far fewer risks.” |
Which are the influential actors?
|
“OIF [...] can be done in a way that takes the agreement of a large number of nations who have signed up to this convention. But it does not mean that every single nation has got equal weight in my view. And it has been unfortunate as we can see in the Convention of Biological Biodiversity (CBD) constituted with statements that have not been very well thought out. And these statements are the result of pressures from very small groups that exercise enormous influence on what should be global problems. I think this is not the way we can make rational decisions on this very difficult space.”
|
|
“My principal concern is that geoengineering research and advocacy is confined to a very small group of scientists and a few conservative economists and political activists, and that the question of what kind of geoengineering technology is developed, how it is developed, who funds it and who owns it and who makes the decision about its deployment. All of this should be debated and decided by the international community, rather than being in the hand of a few scientists and a few companies that are taking out patents. So the question for me is not so much if you are for or against it but the question is under what circumstances, under what institutional, regulatory circumstances should geoengineering research proceed.”
|
|
“I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, if this is a shared problem, everyone should in principle have a say about it. There are many novelties in all kinds of areas, and how can we expect everyone to get involved and have knowledge and have opinion about everything that is new and could potentially concern them? [...] Having said that, there are practical constraints. I would have a reservation in terms of direct participation. I have a relatively strong faith in representative democracy. I think we can, to some extent, manage experts through the state, parliaments, etc. which means everybody does not have to be involved directly with every issue all the time. Having said that, if anyone wants to organize and get involved more, we should still inform people about what is happening. But there are lots of practical problems why that would not happen with everyone. And also I think social scientists need to get real.”
|