Geo-engineering: A roadmap towards international guidelines
This report presents a first screening and analysis of the legal and political framework related to the potential deployment of geo-engineering interventions.
Geo-engineering (GE) can be defined as the process through which humans voluntarily manipulate the energy input to the Earth System deploying natural climate impacting processes by means of available technologies. It is brought to the attention by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) authors as an alternative escape-valve to counteract the effects and impacts of global warming in the Summary for Policymakers (IPCC-XXX/Doc. 10) of the IPCC AR5 WGI (2014). The IPCC 2012 meeting established criteria for assessing GE technologies: effectiveness, feasibility, scalability, sustainability, environmental risks, costs & affordability, detection & attribution. However, not explicitly addressed in the document are the legal and political aspects as well as the ethical and social implications. The challenges to regulate geo-engineering are large: it took a decade of negotiations to conclude the Law of Sea Convention and the Protection of the Atmosphere is since 2013 taken up in the program of the UN International Law Commission (ILC).
This study aims at mapping the legal and political constraints related to geo-engineering within the extent of an international environmental legal framework. Thereto, all UN legal documents were screened and confronted with a series of parameters set in the definition of geo-engineering. The legal documents most pertinent to geo-engineering (i.e. the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity) were evaluated on their potential ability to rule geo-engineering interventions.
SACCO Nicoletta;
JANSSENS-MAENHOUT Greet;
GALMARINI Stefano;
MICHEL Quentin;
2022-04-29
European Commission
JRC99777
978-92-79-54951-9 (print),
978-92-79-54950-2,
1018-5593 (print),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 27733,
OP LB-NA-27733-EN-C (print),
OP LB-NA-27733-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC99777,
10.2788/29362 (online),
10.2788/175032 (print),
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