“Geoengineering the Climate: An Issue for Peace and Security Studies?” – The international conference in Hamburg

On 10 and 11 November 2011, an international conference – Geoengineering the Climate: An Issue for Peace and Security Studies? – took place on the University of Hamburg’s KlimaCampus. Over 50 climate and peace researchers from the US, England and Germany met there to discuss the future of geoengineering, the science of purposefully manipulating the Earth’s climate. adelphi co-organized the conference, where geoengineering was discussed for the first time in the contexts of climate research, and peace and security studies.

Is geoengineering a viable emergency back-up plan for facing the consequences of climate change? What dangers might these kinds of technologies pose for the environment and society? Who has the authority to decide on these measures and who will feel their impact? Do they hold potential for conflict and what are the security risks? These questions and more were discussed at the international workshop.

Geoengineering processes range from measures to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, to technologies that aim to artificially cool the atmosphere by filling it with fine particulate matter. At the beginning of the conference, Peter Liss from the University of East Anglia outlined the various approaches. Over the rest of the conference, individual geoengineering processes were presented in detail in three panels, and security risks, potential for conflict and international regulatory measures were discussed. Manipulating the climate throws up complex issues relating to the distribution of benefits, costs and risks between generations and the world’s various regions.

While the delegates mostly all agreed that the use of geoengineering could not yet be justified, due to the immense complexity and amount of uncertainties involved, as well as the fact that many aspects still have to be researched, there were a variety of opinions as to what approaches should be taken to experiments.

According to the co-organizers Jürgen Scheffran and Michael Link (KlimaCampus), Michael Brzoska and Götz Neuneck (IFSH) and Achim Maas (adelphi), the workshop offered the first opportunity to discuss geoengineering in the context of climate research, and peace and security studies.