Climate Geoengineering and Its Governance

What can we do today to work toward adequate governance of climate engineering down the road? In this podcast, Myanna Dellinger discusses with Matthias Honegger why governance urgently requires a global conversation open to all, which can help unearth concerns, risks and opportunities associated with various new ways to dealing with climate change in the context of expected future impacts from climate change itself. 

After studying environmental system sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology, Matthias Honegger has been working since the beginning of 2012 on international climate policy in developing countries and on climate negotiations as a consultant for various multilateral organizations and governmental bodies with the consulting firm Perspectives Climate Change (CV). During this time, he has actively followed and contributed to research on climate engineering and its governance and reflected about the climate engineering governance implications of the Paris Agreement (Harvard Viewpoints article). At the 22nd Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that took place November 2016 in Marrakech, Matthias has participated in what may well be the first serious conversations on this important issue area on the margins of international climate negotiations – including with negotiators representing countries from the global south and north. He also spoke in Marrakech on the need for a global conversation in a panel discussion (video). In his position at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), Matthias Honegger is undertaking social science research on questions regarding governance (mobilizing and regulating negative emissions technologies), and risks in context of direct interventions in the climate system and the growing threat from climate change.