https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48510-y
Authors
Livia Fritz, Chad M. Baum, Sean Low & Benjamin K. Sovacool
16 May 2024
Abstract
The need for public engagement is increasingly evident as discussions intensify around emerging methods for carbon dioxide removal and controversial proposals around solar geoengineering. Based on 44 focus groups in 22 countries across the Global North and Global South (N = 323 participants), this article traces public preferences for a variety of bottom-up and top-down engagement practices ranging from information recipient to broad decision authority. Here, we show that engagement practices need to be responsive to local political cultures and socio-technical environments, while attending to the global dimensions and interconnectedness of the issues at stake. Establishing public engagement as a cornerstone of inclusive and sustainable governance of climate-intervention technologies requires (i) recognizing the diversity of forms and intensities of engaging, (ii) considering national contexts and modes of engagement, (iii) tailoring to technological idiosyncrasies, (iv) adopting power-sensitive practices, (v) accounting for publics’ prior experience, (vi) establishing trust and procedural legitimacy and (vii) engaging with tensions and value disagreements.
Forms of public engagement emphasized for selected SRM and CDR approaches.
Using a mapping grid adapted from Chilvers et al.49 the figure displays for the respective climate-intervention technologies which forms of engagement are emphasized across focus groups, whether they are top–down or bottom–up initiated (y-axis) and whether they occur in initial issue formation (information; expression of views), decision-making or implementation of climate-intervention technologies (x-axis); the mapping shows which types of engagement are most discussed for the respective climate-intervention technologies; categories not mutually exclusive, i.e., different engagement forms can be emphasized for the same carbon dioxide removal (CDR) or solar radiation modification (SRM) approach; mapping is based on authors’ interpretation of results in Table 2. AF/RF afforestation, reforestation and restoration, SOILS soil carbon sequestration and biochar, EW enhanced rock weathering, DACCS direct air capture and carbon storage, BECCS bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, MCB marine cloud brightening, SAI stratospheric aerosol injection, SPACE space-based geoengineering.
Source: Nature Communications
