[Journal Article] Public Engagement with Biotechnologies Offers Lessons for the Governance of Geoengineering Research and Beyond

From the 12 November 2013 report at PLoS (Public Library of Science) 

Summary

In this paper, we reflect on our involvement in one of the first major research projects in the emerging area of geoengineering (the deliberate intervention in the planetary climate). The project, Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE), proposed an outdoor experiment that attracted substantial public scrutiny despite a strong consensus that the experiment posed no direct environmental risk. A programme of stakeholder engagement took place that sought a deep understanding of the views about the proposed experiment. The lessons from this experiment build on insights from public engagement with the biosciences and biotechnology. In particular, we see the importance of questions of context and purpose for scientific research. This has important implications for the governance of geoengineering research. Efforts to detach areas of research from public scrutiny by using thresholds, whether these are drawn at a particular level of environmental effect or at the doors of a laboratory, will encounter problems of public credibility. Geoengineering is unavoidably entangled in a political discussion that scientists should seek to understand and engage with.

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The progress of biotechnology brings the potential for ever more intimate and disruptive interventions into human bodies and the natural environment. As previous papers in this series have described, there have been various attempts, especially in the last decade, to improve engagement between scientists and public groups on issues involving biotechnology [17]. Engagement exercises, whether with particular non-science stakeholders or members of the general public, reveal layers of societal concern with these technologies. There is typically concern with the eventual downstream risks and the ethical implications of technologies. But these things are hard to assess in advance due to the profound uncertainty that surrounds emerging technology. Public engagement typically also reveals a set of “upstream” concerns[18].

When brought into dialogue about emerging technologies, before it is clear what the risks are likely to be, members of the public will typically express concern about the trajectory of technological pathways. A report of one large public dialogue exercise on Synthetic Biology[19] drew out five questions for scientists that characterised public concerns about this nascent technology:

• What is the purpose?
• Why do you want to do it?
• What are you going to gain from it?
• What else is it going to do?
• How do you know you are right?

  These questions get to the heart of the politics of emerging technologies and the foundations of public trust in scientific research. Conventional technology assessment considers the downstream products of research and innovation with a focus on technological risk and ethics[20]. More recent anticipatory governance approaches, such as “constructive technology assessment” [16], “real-time technology assessment” [15], and “responsible innovation” [21], attempt to broaden the debate to include consideration of the processes and purposes of research, in line with the five questions above. Such approaches emphasise the importance of democratic deliberation in “opening up” the technological options and trajectories for appraisal[22]. Geoengineering in general and the SPICE project in particular have become important test cases for this new mode of governance [23].

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• New Study: ‘Geoengineering to Cause Drought Worldwide’ (intellihub.com)
• Retooling the Planet: The False Promise of Geoengineering (resilience.org)
• We Don’t Geoengineer the Planet But We Have to Continue! (freeasthysweetmountainair.wordpress.com)
• Playing God: 4 Geoengineering Projects Doomed To Fail While Polluting The Earth (wakingtimes.com)
• Climate Change and Geoengineering (therebel.org)
• Strange Bedfellows? Climate Change Denial and Support for Geoengineering (yaleclimatemediaforum.org)