SRM Governance With Cynthia Scharf

Dr. Pete Irvine: [00:00:00] Welcome to Climate Reflections, the SRM 360 podcast, where we discuss sunlight reflection methods, or SRM, ideas to reduce the impacts of climate change by reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. Many different SRM ideas have been proposed, some of which could be applied over a limited area, for example, increasing cloud reflectivity or thinning heat trapping cirrus clouds. Some hope these ideas could target the local impacts of warming, but studies consistently show that even regional SRM deployments could have broader global consequences. The trouble is, we don’t have an effective global governing body that could address this. Instead, we have 195 nation states and a set of existing international agreements, none of which directly tackles this issue.

So, how might decisions on SRM get made? And what will policy makers need to effectively engage with this international issue? For this episode on the [00:01:00] international governance of SRM, I spoke with Cynthia Scharf, a Senior Fellow for Climate Interventions at the Centre for Future Generations, a Brussels based think tank, about her work bridging the gap between scientists studying SRM and the policy makers who will ultimately decide what should be done about it. What did you think about SRM when you first heard about it?

Cynthia Scharf: Wow. Uh, well, truthfully, back in 2014, when I first started reading about it, I was terrified and also somewhat fascinated, I must admit, as well. It seemed like a fantastical thing at that point. But at the time, I was working in the office of the UN Secretary General. This was obviously right before Paris. Um, I was with them for eight years, before, during, and after the Paris Agreement. And after the Paris Agreement was signed, and we started seeing some of the NDCs roll in, the Nationally Determined Contributions, I [00:02:00] started feeling a greater sense of anxiety that, um, the commitments that are being pledged and what we need to do, even if those pledges weren’t fulfilled, which as we know from experience is not the case, um, things weren’t adding up. And I felt that it was just prudent to learn more about this area and I became aware of an initiative that was being formed to help jumpstart conversations with governance as their primary topic, with national governments and heads of relevant UN agencies and different NGOs around the world.

And of all the things that I could have worked on when I left the UN, this was the one thing I wanted most to do, because I felt like it was the most difficult. It was the one no one wanted to touch, but frankly it was the one where I felt both my head and heart were calling me into this area.

Dr. Pete Irvine: What kind of reactions[00:03:00] did you get, or do you get, from international policymakers when you discuss this idea with them?

Cynthia Scharf: Back in 2017, there was an element of incredulity and almost dismissive. Sometimes I think we secured meetings, not because of what we had to say, but in spite of that. You know, just basically drawing on contacts we had back at the UN and the attitude back then was, oh, this is interesting, but you’re kind of um, this is not really going to happen.

And over those seven years, as climate impacts worsened, as the news about what governments are doing or not doing continued to roll in, that attitude definitely changed. And these meetings were all behind closed doors, um, and that definitely shapes what was said. Um, but that attitude from astonishment and incredulity changed into [00:04:00] anxiety and deepening serious interest, and wow, okay, maybe these technologies are really being researched. Maybe there’s something we need to look at here. How do we think about this in the context of what we have publicly pledged to do?

If we talk about this issue, meaning SRM, the moral hazard might come to the fore and I would think of all the different reasons why there’s been hesitancy for policymakers to talk about this openly, moral hazard is definitely the first one. Meaning if they talk about this, then it might weaken incentive and political will to do all the things that we have to do, regardless. [Things] that we should have been doing for the last 30 years, that we have not been doing, and it goes even beyond just the policy side of things, it gets personal. People who’ve been working on climate for decades. It’s almost like an admission of failure that this, [00:05:00] this goal I’ve been working for, for so many years that I believed in. We’re not living up to what it promised. So it’s, it’s beyond just a rational reaction. It also gets into personal psychology and professional identities.

Dr. Pete Irvine: So, policymakers have been dismissive about SRM as a possibility. Is that changing?

Cynthia Scharf: Um, so that attitude shifted. And now when I have conversations, primarily with EU policymakers, but not exclusively, and these are senior people, they’ve heard of SRM. They don’t know much about it. There’s misinformation based on the little pieces of information.

And we feel that our job is to try and correct that misinformation and really listen. Listen and learn, and not come in heavy handed with the latest IPCC science and rattle off a bunch of statistics because I know from experience that that goes right over the heads of most people. So, when I go in and talk to, [00:06:00] to policymakers, I really listen for their questions. I really search those and ask them for their questions. And I talk about things that are beyond the science. I talk about the governance challenges and how that often just comes down to very human questions of cooperation. Cooperation, ideas of right and wrong, fairness of how do we bring in all of society on questions that sometimes are very complicated. What do we need to do in terms of educating the public? What would be helpful for them? I often end with that question. What is most helpful for you that we can be doing?

And that, that I think helps break the tension and the anxiety that’s in the room. And I often explain why I first came to this issue, and how I came to it because I was quite scared. And having that reaction is perfectly normal, and in fact, [00:07:00] as, as many SRM researchers have said, you know, if you’re not scared, maybe you’re not just listening. Um, we need to have this conversation, but it’s a scary conversation. Um, and it’s scary because of what it implies for use of such a tool and what it implies if we don’t use it. And perhaps that’s even the most scary aspect of this, is the whole sub context of we’re headed towards a world that is surpassing the Paris Agreement by 100%. So that puts things in a really helpful context as well.

Dr. Pete Irvine: You mentioned a primary concern of policymakers being that SRM might weaken the political will to cut emissions. I guess, maybe, I naively thought that they wouldn’t be afraid of that, since they are the ones helping to decide policy. Are they the ones controlling the policies?

Cynthia Scharf: But they aren’t, I think that’s the key point. They’re policy makers, they’re, [00:08:00] in some cases, bureaucrats, just trying to fulfill whatever they have to do under an already agreed regime. The fact is they’re not under control of this and getting political support to push through policies that have already been agreed is really difficult and you have to remember that a policymaker, even if they’re focused on climate at the end of the day, you’re always competing for political capital and just mind share with other issues that have nothing to do with this.

The war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, inflation, the next election. Um, so when you get higher and higher up in the seniority levels with policymakers, it’s never just a climate conversation.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Are the concerns and the questions that policymakers raise reflected in the academic debate, or are we missing something over in academia?

Cynthia Scharf: There is a very big gap between the research [00:09:00] community’s knowledge of various questions, the questions of uncertainty that remain, the risks and benefits, and what policymakers know. Oftentimes, they know, as I said before, snippets of a bigger story, but those snippets might actually be taking them down a path that isn’t accurate or incomplete, and in that incompleteness makes it inaccurate.

So for example, on the question of, are we capable of doing this now? Ideas range from no, this is science fiction, it’s going to be 50 years from now to yeah, Elon Musk could deploy next year. So there is not understanding on some very basic questions of what do we know? What do we not know? What do we think are the benefits? What do we think are the key risks? How long is it going to take till we can do this? How much money will it [00:10:00] cost? And questions of who’s doing it now and who’s cheating. Very simple questions, but the academic community maybe doesn’t hear those very often and the research it does is, is much more detailed. And, at times, doesn’t easily translate into information that can be then, sent back to policymakers and answers their questions in a simple yes or no, or in a simple 30 second response.

Dr. Pete Irvine: So have you noticed differences between the reactions you get from policymakers from different parts of the world? Um, is there like a big Global South, Global North divide? Any other divides?

Cynthia Scharf: I could make a general observation that when we spoke with folks who are younger, there is more of an appreciation of technology’s transformative powers. So make of that what you will, but I have noticed that and regardless of North or South. I do sense that there are [00:11:00] differences between, um, the level of trust in what we’re saying between, uh, policymakers who are in the rich countries, um, the G7, for example, and those who are in least developed countries or, um, climate vulnerable countries.

Those who have been on the front lines of receiving the first and worst of climate impacts, um, are both interested in the research. They’re quite interested, um, often coming from a perspective of, well, we already know the future is very grim for us, so of course I’m interested in a technology that potentially could provide some benefits, but there’s also an attitude of mistrust. Um, and particularly in least developed countries that have been promised the 100 billion in 2009 from the Copenhagen Agreement, which has never manifest. A lot of skepticism, [00:12:00] um, because that money has never appeared because promises have been broken repeatedly. And an attitude of, I want to know what’s going to happen in my region, in my country, from my people, and barring that, I’m only going to be interested in science that comes from the IPCC. The second ranking would be from WMO or UNEP, um, but having science that is attributed to a scholar in one particular elite university in the global north, um, there’s definitely a skepticism that comes with that.

Dr. Pete Irvine: So similar, or are there differences you’ve noticed, say, between the U.S. versus Europe versus China?

Cynthia Scharf: Being an American, I have not worked on U.S. climate policy itself, but I’m certainly aware of attitudes in this country towards climate change. Now I work for an E.U. think tank, and I’m the only American on the staff, and it’s very obvious to me that there’s a different mindset. It is much more of a precautionary [00:13:00] stance towards any technology, but SRM in this case. There is a focus on risk and oftentimes potential benefits are not mentioned. And that’s when I try and bring it back to why are we even having this conversation in the first place? Perhaps we can save lives, perhaps we can mitigate suffering. Not as the solution, not as the cure, not as a substitute for all the things that we have to do that we haven’t been doing for 30 years, but perhaps we can save some lives and mitigate some suffering.

So if that premise is not true, then we shouldn’t even be having the conversation. I also see the [00:14:00] word disrupting or disruption, not used in the American sense of something that is cool or potentially transformative in a positive sense. Disruption means instability, it means something negative.

I definitely sense a mistrust toward the West for all the reasons I just mentioned, you know, not coming through on pledges of emissions reductions and finance and technology transfer and all of those things. Definite distrust [and] a sense that, hey, we have some pretty bright people looking at this issue in our country as well that I want to listen to and that I want to engage with those folks, but interest, definite interest in the potential for this technology.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Would governing or managing cooperating over SRM be easier than emissions cuts and adaptation, which seem quite difficult?

Cynthia Scharf: In a [00:15:00] crisis, decisions would be made about SRM by, um, less than transparent, inclusive, accountable, um, societal wide discussions, all the things that we would want in a governance process. In a non-crisis situation, SRM brings in questions of intergenerational justice, equity, geopolitical power that are present in the emissions reductions conversations as well, but they seem more immediate and more concentrated. That could mean that conversations are more difficult, but I think it also could mean conversations are more focused.

I do think that all the conversations over the last 20, 30 years in the UNFCCC process, it doesn’t feel immediate. And that enables negotiations to go on and [00:16:00] on and on. Whereas if there’s more of an immediate challenge or immediate opportunity, then minds might be more focused.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Also, it’s not a zero-sum game, but I guess with adaptation funding and with emission spending, it’s costly things today for either benefits to others or benefits further in the future. Whereas I think with SRM, the costs are relatively low, if we can cooperate, and the benefits would be relatively quick. Does that change in the time structure and the game structure? Will that make it different?

Cynthia Scharf: That sense of more immediate benefits and, and more immediate costs could be an aid to more focused conversations in governance. When the decisions can be put off for quite a long time, or the impacts of those decisions can be put off for quite a long time, [00:17:00] um, there’s a tendency to games play in negotiation and to continue things on and parse things out. As you said, the, the benefits and the costs would be more immediately relevant in SRM and that could potentially focus minds in a way that enables governance conversations to go on at a quicker pace. It may not make them more inclusive, however.

Dr. Pete Irvine: You mentioned the governance challenges presented by the science diplomacy gap earlier, which I understood to mean the gap between what policymakers know about SRM and what is actually known by scientists. What could be done or should be done today to address that gap?

Cynthia Scharf: It is an enormous gap, no matter which country you speak to. One of the things that we are trying to do at the International Center for Future Generations is to bridge exactly that gap by bringing together policy makers and researchers.

The first step [00:18:00] in that was getting together a list of questions directly from policy makers on what did they want to know. And we got those questions and took them to people in the research community and got a variety of answers to those questions, and then fed that back to the policy makers. That had a very positive feedback loop because policy makers felt listened to. They did not feel spoken down to, they did not feel like their questions were too trivial, they were taken seriously and they were given answers to questions that they have to answer themselves; either to the superiors or to their constituents.

We may look at that in terms of scenario development, choosing particular regions of the world where a potential deployment might take place and bringing together both researchers and policy makers, policy advisors to do some kind of scenario exercises. Another possibility [00:19:00] is focusing on a specific climate tipping point. So, for example, the Arctic, and I just came back from a week in Iceland at the Arctic Circle Assembly. I spoke on a panel about governance for SRM in the region, and there is now growing interest in looking at SRM, um, what it might mean in the Arctic for both risks as well as potential benefits and some international governance bodies might be potentially looking at how they can contribute from the research side.

And when speaking with this research group, when I tell them that policymakers are very interested in this region, not only for climate reasons, but also for security reasons, again, it focuses minds and it elevates the conversation to a level of both urgency and seriousness.

Dr. Pete Irvine: I think there’s [00:20:00] also a science science gap? As in, it’s a relatively small community who has been studying this topic and the findings and understanding there is, are not widely known or widely shared. Are there steps in that space that can be taken, assessment reports or so on?

Cynthia Scharf: I think assessments would help. I think timing of the release of information or being smart about how that information is packaged could help. And here I’m really thinking about not necessarily the climate academic community outside of SRM, but I’m thinking of those scientists who advise the large NGOs. I think producing information in a way that is useful and digestible for those folks [00:21:00] could be a very important positive step for both, for both the NGO community and for the SRM research community. And learning when their conferences are or when their cycles are in terms of information, they then have to pass on to their senior people in the NGO so that they can make a policy decision about SRM. Um, so I think that could be something that can be improved.

Dr. Pete Irvine: When people talk about the governance of SRM, maybe there’s a few different elements. There’s having the discussion around the topic, have people informed, there’s potential deployment in the future, and then there’s research. Like, how do you think about those different domains?

Is there, is there an urgent need for governance of field experiments, or lab work, or modelling today? Like, what do you think about the governance of research into this topic, and how it might link to those other areas?

Cynthia Scharf: So based on conversations I’ve had with policymakers, it becomes real when [00:22:00] it goes outside. Anything done on a computer, there’s really no issue about that. They would like to see standards upheld about transparency, they’d like to know who funds various pieces of research, but when it becomes outside, it’s real and it doesn’t matter the size, the scale of the outdoor experiment.

For example, Scopex, you know, scientists at Harvard, I think, could jump up, down and sideways saying the amount of material released will not have a dangerous impact on the environment. It didn’t really matter. It’s the symbolic act of going outside that makes it real. And it also then brings into question the very important point of prior informed consent and public engagement. And so, that’s why outdoor experiments really become the first step along the road of governance. So I would say governance of outdoor testing and governance of deployment are really where we’re [00:23:00] talking about a need for a much more informed conversation and one in which much broader aspects of societal input are sought.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Most of the work in this field, including the field experiments is being done by researchers. But we’ve seen some commercial entities enter the field too. Notably, Make Sunsets has been launching balloons from Mexico and the USA to add a trivial amount of sulfur into the stratosphere so they can sell cooling credits to consumers. How has this been received by policy makers?

Cynthia Scharf: When Make Sunsets did their experiment, you know, in the most DIY form possible, right? Um, even that got people very scared and it certainly woke up a lot of folks who had never thought about this issue ever before. As far as I know, the government of Mexico did not actually issue a ban, but it certainly raised attention within a variety of places in the Mexican government and [00:24:00] got a huge amount of media attention. And what they were doing had no scientific impact whatsoever but again, it was the symbolic act of putting something out there that caught the attention.

Dr. Pete Irvine: There’s another effort called Stardust, which is a private effort to develop the intellectual property, the IP, for a patented particle and deployment strategy for stratospheric aerosol injection. How concerned are policymakers about these kinds of developments, and are they thinking about ways such efforts might be governed or managed?

Cynthia Scharf: Oftentimes they’re not aware. Oftentimes it’s us coming to bring them information. Do you know that there is now a company that has received multi-million-dollar investment funding that is looking very seriously into this that goes beyond just buying some balloons on Amazon? When they hear this, their ears definitely perk up. Again, it becomes more real to them.

I think they haven’t, at least when I’ve had that conversation, gotten to the point of, okay, what does this mean for IP? [00:25:00] What does this mean for economic incentives? It’s literally their first hearing of this event, but I do think that as more actors come into the space, commercial actors, that it will certainly gather more attention. That could be positive in bringing the question back to a more time relevant, more urgent priority. So positive in the sense that it elevates the issue on the policy agenda. Um, I think it potentially also hearkens to other technologies that if they had been regulated early on, we might not have gone down some paths or seen some negative impacts that we’ve now seen.

And one of the technologies or developments that is mentioned is Facebook. And if we had paid a bit more attention to the potential effects of [00:26:00] Facebook on attitudes that young people and the psychology of young people, maybe we would have been a little bit more rigorous in how we regulated that technology or we thought about it a little bit more and wanted parental controls around that kind of technology. I hear that more in the EU than I do in the U.S.

Dr. Pete Irvine: In a way, Facebook was much harder to predict than the effects of SRM. You know, a complete rewiring of the way everyone interacts, what that would mean.

Cynthia Scharf: Agreed. Yes.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Who could have anticipated? Anyway, again, thinking of thinking of governance developments, what are some of the positive steps that countries could take today to start building the kinds of cooperation, the kinds of agreements that might support, you know, wise decision making in this space as this technology develops and this discussion advances.

Cynthia Scharf: Everything starts and ends with trust when you’re talking [00:27:00] about governance for SRM. That’s one reason that we’re focusing on two, what we call no regret governance options, encouraging more transparency in the research. Transparency of who is doing what and who’s paying for it. And secondly, monitoring, because a very common question you’ll hear is, well, how do we know if someone’s cheating, or is someone already doing this? So who’s doing what? Transparency. How do we know? Monitoring.

They’re very basic things that we think we can make some progress on in a practical way. So we are, um, encouraging efforts to come up with an international registry for SRM research. We’re also talking about monitoring and potentially stitching together, for example, the European Space Agency and relevant actors in the US and Japan and Canada and other places so that there is monitoring not just by [00:28:00] one nation state or one group of governments, but a broader network of governments that would give more confidence to people that, um, the potential bad effects or the potential for cheating is being taken seriously.

So that’s what we’re looking at in terms of immediate positive steps. It’s kind of hard to argue against those but you can, and on monitoring, um, the question of, well, who’s monitoring, who’s the authority, um, who’s monitoring do we trust? Again, it all goes back to the issue of trust. That’s a very important question. And I think the broader the network of monitoring capabilities, the more trust that will engender.

Dr. Pete Irvine: What kind of monitoring activities could countries do?

Cynthia Scharf: For example, um, the European Space Agency has been brought in to work on the issue of detecting aerosols in the stratosphere. [00:29:00] So primarily looking at satellite-based monitoring and joining together networks that might exist only within one country or within one region to have a broader expanse of monitoring.

Dr. Pete Irvine: I suppose international observational networks and other scientific collaborations could help engender trust. But you mentioned earlier that many smaller, poorer nations, especially in the Global South, only trust information that comes out of the IPCC or UNEP. Is that something the Global North is also pushing for?

Cynthia Scharf: The EU definitely believes that more research and international research and collaborative research is important. There is a desire for international assessments. In the Global North, the emphasis on those being IPCC or UNEP is not as vociferous as it is in the Global South. And it’s obvious why that would be the case because there just isn’t as much capacity in the Global South to do the kind of level of detailed research [00:30:00] that’s happening in the Global North. But certainly a desire for international assessments is another trust building exercise and an essential for going forward on governance.

I could add one other thing that isn’t exactly governance, but from the trust building side of things is important and that’s trusted messengers. So, trusted messages derive from trusted assessments, right? Trusted messengers go into a different area and trusted messengers are sometimes even more important than the message themselves. And it has been extremely difficult to find people in the climate community who are trusted by a broad swath of even one nation, let alone 195 nations. Um, but finding trusted messengers and voices on SRM is really difficult. And that’s why I think we need scientists, but we need [00:31:00] voices other than scientists to enter into this conversation. Um, so voices that come in from perhaps the biodiversity community, or from a faith tradition, or from transparency points of view. Those people who have a credibility that broadens the tent or opens the tent.

But, thus far, that’s a real gap that we have, is finding those trusted messengers, um, that can speak to people and, um, if we can cultivate those kinds of folks, I think that will help with the governance. I think that’ll be a big step forward.

Dr. Pete Irvine: There’s a debate around this topic, and then there’s a debate regarding whether we should be talking about this topic. How much sympathy do policymakers have with that debate of, we should keep this under wraps, we should keep this quiet, this is just going to be a distraction? How compelling do they find that argument?

Cynthia Scharf: That attitude [00:32:00] is changing quickly. There’s a desire to learn that perhaps wasn’t as compelling before. There’s a recognition that this topic cannot be ignored, that there are now serious actors, and that even more importantly, the climate situation itself is becoming grave in a way that it’s hard to ignore. And so, that conversation is changing very quickly. I don’t feel that we have to justify having this conversation anymore.

Dr. Pete Irvine: Limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees has been central to international climate policy since 2015, since the Paris Agreement. How much of an impact will the world crossing that 1.5 degree level have on discussions of SRM?

Cynthia Scharf: I personally have not focused on 1.5 because I found it was unhelpful. I think we’re in a period right now where people are realizing the impacts are worsening. There is no country in the world that is exempt for this. And [00:33:00] what perhaps the new scientific focal point might be is tipping points. Um, I know there’s a lot of controversy in the scientific community about, is this real? Can we justify this? And that conversation I leave to the scientists, but it is acquiring resonance with policymakers, and it focuses minds in ways that even 1.5 doesn’t. So I sense that the scientific benchmark conversation might be moving towards climate tipping points.

Dr. Pete Irvine: That’s it for today’s episode of Climate Reflections! Thanks for listening. The questions around the governance of SRMs span a broad range of topics, from governing experiments and research, to potentially deciding whether and how to deploy SRM. It was great to have Cynthia Scharf on to give an excellent introduction to these topics and the challenges that policymakers face.

This is a new podcast and we’re hoping to build our audience. So if you enjoyed it, please do share [00:34:00] it on social media or recommend it to a friend. If you have a question about SRM or just want to find out more, go to our website, srm360.org. We also answer questions from the audience in our monthly news roundup, so you might hear your question answered there. You can find a transcript of today’s episode with links to sources on our website, so please check it out.