Reconstructing Risk–Risk Analysis to Support Effective Governance of High-Risk Climate Interventions
Research into solar radiation modification (SRM) offers tentative hope of averting some of the risks of otherwise unavoidable climate change. Yet such technologies come with novel risks. Risk–risk, or risk trade-off analysis has been proposed as a governance tool to evaluate the desirability of deve...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge University Press
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| Series: | European Journal of Risk Regulation |
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| Online Access: | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1867299X25100196/type/journal_article |
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| Summary: | Research into solar radiation modification (SRM) offers tentative hope of averting some of the risks of otherwise unavoidable climate change. Yet such technologies come with novel risks. Risk–risk, or risk trade-off analysis has been proposed as a governance tool to evaluate the desirability of development of such potential climate interventions, but most references to such analysis appear primarily as rhetorical efforts to argue for continued SRM research. A detailed review of the leading methodological proposal reveals serious practical and ethical shortcomings arising in both the framing and current methodologies of risk-risk analysis. Methodological inconsistencies and asymmetries are identified, and related to underlying political and ideological presumptions rooted in modernist technocratic social imaginaries. The shortcomings mean ethical questions are not resolved, interaction effects between possible responses are downplayed and other potential exceptional responses ignored. Rather than identifying possible risk-superior pathways, in this case risk-tradeoff analysis – embedded in a technocratic risk management repertoire – seems likely to encourage excessive reliance on SRM. While methodological improvements could be made to risk–risk analysis approaches, effective future governance urgently needs a novel, genuinely precautionary, risk management repertoire that would help humanity live with uncertainty, support meaningful action to avoid worst-case outcomes, and reflect an ethics of care. |
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| ISSN: | 1867-299X 2190-8249 |