July 2017, Volume 143, Issue 1–2, pp 1–12 | Cite as

The Asia-Pacific’s role in the emerging solar geoengineering debate

Increasing interest in climate engineering in recent years has led to calls by the international research community for international research collaboration as well as global public engagement. But making such collaboration a reality is challenging. Here, we report the summary of a 2016 workshop on the significance and challenges of international collaboration on climate engineering research with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Because of the region’s interest in benefits and risks of climate engineering, there is a potential synergy between impact research on anthropogenic global warming and that on solar radiation management. Local researchers in the region can help make progress toward better understanding of impacts of solar radiation management. These activities can be guided by an ad hoc Asia-Pacific working group on climate engineering, a voluntary expert network. The working group can foster regional conversations in a sustained manner while contributing to capacity building. An important theme in the regional conversation is to develop effective practices of dialogues in light of local backgrounds such as cultural traditions and past experiences of large-scale technology development. Our recommendation merely portrays one of several possible ways forward, and it is our hope to stimulate the debate in the region.

We thank all the participants at the workshop for their intellectual inputs. This project was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX) as part of the Future Earth project. We thank Kayoko Namba for her excellent logistical and research support.
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