Standard Grant: Geoengineering, Political Legitimacy and Justice

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

General Audience Summary This standard research grant will enable the PI and co-PI to foster the creation of an international research community that focuses on the ethical and political issues concerning geo-engineering. The grant will support the organization of two conferences, the editing of a book, and their own research on the subject. The core of the project involves the organization of two workshops, one at the University of Washington, the home university of the PI, and the other at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, the home university of the co-PI, who is also an affiliate of the PI?s institution. The first workshop is to be funded by the National Science Foundation, and the second is to be funded separately by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The edited book will be aimed at an interdisciplinary audience of philosophers, political scientists, policymakers and students; the research of the PI and co-PI will be published as chapters in the book. Funding is provided for two graduate students to assist them in organizing the first conference and in editing the book, and to cover their travel and lodging expenses for attending the second conference that is to be held in Switzerland. Technical Summary Although some preliminary work has been done on the governance of geo-engineering, it has mainly focused on institutional aspects and on the perspectives of international law and economics. This project will focus instead on the normative aspects, and in particular on the core notions of legitimacy and justice. Specifically, the participants of two workshops will focus on the issues of political legitimacy, procedural and distributive justice, and governance. They will address a number of questions, such as whether consideration of these issues provides reasons to favor some forms of geo-engineering over others, or to resist some more vigorously than others, and whether different interventions raise distinct issues for institutional design. They will serve to create an international research community around geo-engineering issues, they will expand the debate among academics as well as the wider public, and they will lead to the publication of an edited book. Broader impacts include the involvement of graduate students prospects for policy recommendations.