Beyond solutionist science for the Anthropocene: To navigate the contentious atmosphere of solar geoengineering

Abstract

The emerging narrative of the Anthropocene has created a new space for changes in global environmental change (GEC) science. On the one hand, there is a mounting call for changing scientific practices towards a solution-oriented transdisciplinary mode that can help achieve global sustainability. On the other hand, the scientists’ desire to avoid exceeding planetary boundaries has broken a taboo on researching solar geoengineering, a dangerous idea of deliberately cooling the Earth’s climate. Whilst to date the two features have been discussed separately, there is a possible confluence in the future. This paper explores this close yet precarious relationship between transdisciplinary GEC science and solar geoengineering in the context of Future Earth, a new international platform of Earth system science. Our aim is to understand how a transdisciplinary mode of science can navigate the contention over solar geoengineering and its course of research without breeding polarization. By seeking the immediacy of ‘problem-solving’, Future Earth is drawn into the solutionist thinking that orders the mode of engagement in pursuing consensus. However, because conflict is inescapable on the solar geoengineering debate, transdisciplinary engagement might as well aim at mapping out plural viewpoints and allowing people to disagree. In transdisciplinary engagement, as co-design signifies the engagement of stakeholders with decision-making in science, a fair and transparent procedure of making decisions is also needed. From our own experience of co-designing research priorities, we suggest that, if carefully designed, voting can be a useful tool to mediate the contentious process of transdisciplinary decision-making with three different benefits for collective decision-making, namely, efficiency, inclusivity and learning. For the future directions of transdisciplinary GEC science, since the Anthropocene challenges are truly uncertain and contentious, it is argued that the science for the Anthropocene should move away from a solutionist paradigm towards an experimentalist turn.

The politics of co-production: participation, power, and transformation

“…These biases towards elite actors are worrying because they result in these processes reproducing or even exacerbating existing inequalities. And this also affects the quality, usefulness, and legitimacy of their outcomes because they are less likely to result in solutions that resonate with and are usable for non-elite groups [35,[38][39][40].…”

“…In this view, conflicts are unavoidable and it is paramount to resist their premature closure. Drawing on agonistic democratic theory [70,71] amongst others, literature has critiqued the imperatives of integration and consensus as guiding logics of co-production and has highlighted the creative and productive potential importance of contestation, pluralism, informed dissent, and difference [38,40,41,43,[72][73][74][75][76][77][78]67]. One study details an example of co-producing knowledge full of conflict, tensions and risks in an informal settlement in South Africa, which bore local fruit and had positive spill over governance effects without beginning by crafting a shared vision of the future [35].…”

Tapping into science advisers’ learning

“…Over the years, influential voices within science, and among social scientists in particular, have made numerous proposals on how the governance and practices of science might be reformed. These have included amongst others: co-design, co-production, and transdisciplinary research with key stakeholders and decision-makers (including, in some cases, policymakers) (van Kerkhoff, 2005;Pohl, 2008;Turnhout et al, 2012Turnhout et al, , 2020Rice, 2013;Moser, 2016;Asayama et al, 2019); problem-oriented or Mode-2 research (Gibbons et al, 1994;Gibbons, 1999;Sarewitz, 2017); responsible research and innovation (Owen et al, 2012;Stilgoe et al, 2013); and overall greater openness, public accountability, and democratisation of science and science advice (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993;Jasanoff, 1994;Nowotny, 2003;Guston, 2004). Although not all of these proposals have necessarily been realisedin most western democracies-the way research is funded today looks very different from the latter decades of the 20th century.…”

Anticipatory governance of solar geoengineering: conflicting visions of the future and their links to governance proposals

“…Solar geoengineering refers to largely speculative technologies that could be deployed in the future to reflect some incoming solar radiation back into space, to counteract adverse consequences of climate change [ 7 ]. The idea of solar geoengineering is much debated and remains highly contentious, even though these technologies are still at very early stages of conceptualization and development [ 8 • , 9 , 10 ].…”