The world is becoming increasingly aware of not only the consequences of climate change, but also the numerous challenges society will face in adapting to and mitigating these consequences. Propositions such as solar geoengineering could provide a way to mitigate these effects, however, given the global scale of such technologies, successful deployment would need to tackle both technical and political demands of society. Whilst governance studies mostly treat decisions relating to solar geoengineering deployment as a binary (yes or no) dilemma, solar geoengineering is in fact an umbrella term for various propositions (global SAI, arctic solar geo…) in which particular deployment decisions are affected by design decisions. For instance, the choice of a stratospheric particle on purely technical parameters could have political consequences such as impacting human health and the economy. Thus, by determining the operational design of solar geoengineering propositions, engineers would also be at risk of shaping the types of governance that would be possible.

This project assumes that engineering and policy expertise would be needed concurrently, to produce a responsible technico-political engineering design, as well as a fair and inclusive governance system for solar geoengineering.