RESILIENCER Workshop on SRM and Global Catastrophic Risk Report

[Gideon Futerman]

Dear All,

In September 2022, I convened the at the Centre for Complex System Studies in Utrecht the first workshop on SRM and Global Catastrophic Risk. We had scholars from 13 different institutions across Europe in attendance to discuss this issue, and the workshop report, with relatively in depth records of many of the issues discussed, has just been released. I recommend you take a look.

Discussion 1 was titled "What are we doing?" and discussed definitions of SRM research, the implication of this for governance, and involved the presentation, and subsequent discussion (well, I'll be honest, mostly criticism!) of a framework I had developed to map the relationship between research and downstream actions.

Discussion 2 was titled "What would convince me that I am wrong?" and involved the presentation of a variety of ideas from the attendees (who covered the whole spectrum of beliefs around SRM) about their attitudes towards SRM research, deployment and its relationship to Global Catastrophic Risk. This was followed by a discussion of what would convince them they were wrong,  the attendees coming up with  counterarguments against their own ideas, and the identification of cruxes of disagreement.

Discussion 3 involved the generation of numerous, most qualitative,  scenario ideas for SRM and its relationship to SRM. We hope these ideas will be fruitful for other researchers to build upon

Discussion 4 involved discussion around next steps and conclusions of the workshop, involving interesting normative discussions around the role of researchers, and methods of interest between scholars with very different normative or practical concerns.

Overall, I felt it was a very useful workshop, and would like to thank everyone involved, particularly Goodwin Gibbins, SJ Beard and Claudia Wieners for helping with the organisation.

The workshop report link can be found here https://www.resiliencer.org/_files/ugd/a07867_5605a6e494a74d9fad9fabdf4c384cae.pdf