Exploring the Scientific Discourse on Solar Radiation Management and the Global South

Abstract

In the Anthropocene, climate change and its associated impacts are an emerging threat. In the light of global shortcomings in meeting mitigation and adaptation targets, the discourse on geoengineering technologies, including solar radiation management (SRM), emerged. While the technical feasibility of these technologies is still in the experimentation phase, their social, ecological, and economic implications require scientific scrutiny. Scholars attribute the leading role in governing geoengineering to scientists as they steer collective decisions about geoengineering while state action is often absent. This stresses the importance of investigating the scientific discourse, where scholars from the Global South and their interests are systemically underrepresented. In this research project, I will investigate the representation and recognition of the Global South in the knowledge production on solar radiation management (SRM). A mixed quantitative-qualitative research strategy focussing on the global scientific discourse will be supported by empirical work applying a bibliometric analysis and a sociology-of-knowledge discourse analysis. The data pool for the empirical analysis consists of journal articles on solar radiation management from 2009 to 2020 and a number of semi-structured interviews with researchers from the Global South or stakeholders from the science-policy interface. The quantitative analysis of the representation of the Global South in knowledge production on SRM shows low but increasing representation of non-Western authors and institutions. However, only a few of these can be attributed to the Global South, but rather to wealthier countries such as Japan. In particular, the funding of research on SRM is in the hands of Global North institutions. With regard to the recognition of the Global South as legitimate participants in the scientific discourse, the structural analysis of discourse shows that calls for this are widespread, but there are only few indications for their interests being recognised in the discourse. So far, underpinned by normative or strategic rationales, the Global South is often spoken for by scholars from the Global North.