Solar radiation management governance

Project details

The Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative (SRMGI) is a partnership between the Royal Society and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

The project report, launched on 1 December 2011, reviews the progress made by the Initiative to date, covering the international SRMGI conference held in March 2011. It reviews the different perspectives and governance possibilities, without picking winners, in order to open up discussion of the complex issues raised by solar geoengineering.

The initiative aims to ensure that any geoengineering research that goes ahead – inside or outside the laboratory – is conducted in a manner that is responsible, transparent and environmentally sound.

Proposed geoengineering techniques that reflect the sun’s light and heat back into space may offer valuable opportunities to reduce global warming, and could do so quite rapidly, but their impacts could also affect rainfall, regional weather patterns and ocean currents. These impacts would not be restricted by national boundaries, so actions in one country could have highly significant effects in another, for example by changing rainfall and so affecting agriculture and water supply.

The Initiative has engaged with a variety of organisations from across the globe in order to foster an open international dialogue on how research should be governed. Participants include NGOs concerned with natural and social science, governance, legal issues, environment and development, plus industry and civil society organisations. This has ensured that evidence and opinion has been sought from a wide range of stakeholders with appropriate expertise. It is hoped that the international links developed by SRMGI – an important dimension of the project – will help promote cooperation on research governance in the future.