CEC21 SCoPEx Advisory Committee Workshop

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November 12, 2021

The SCoPEx Advisory Committee held a virtual panel discussion on October 7th, 2021 at the Climate Engineering in Context Conference (CEC21). The rationale was to provide a forum for discussion and to collect feedback on various possible approaches to public engagement for SCoPEx.

After providing a brief background of the project and the Advisory Committee’s goals, we used breakout groups to hold open discussions around 2 specific questions. Below we list the questions and a summary of the discussions. We are grateful for these ideas and recommendations and intend to continue engaging with multiple stakeholders in designing a stakeholder engagement protocol for SCoPEx going forward. 

The following ideas were suggested from the audience and do not necessarily represent the views of the Advisory Committee:

Topic 1: How should the Committee engage people local to the research site as well as large numbers of diverse global citizens including Indigenous peoples in an effective engagement?

  • Engagement should begin early and should be continuous
  • Engagement process should take place before a location is selected. In fact, choice of location should actually benefit from the engagement process
  • Process should be designed for inclusive deliberation with a mechanism for ongoing responsiveness.
  • Consider an ethnographic approach to better understand the local communities, their value systems, and their decision-making processes
  • Engagement should be situated culturally and contextually specific
  • Interactive to allow for power/knowledge balances
  • Be explicit about the purpose of engagement and how the outcomes will be shared
  • Emphasis on transparency in discussions with communities, NGOs, local groups and governments
  • Iterative process with multiple meetings and a large enough group for peer interaction, not just deferring to experts
  • Possibility of using scenario development exercises to help people to think together about possible futures, mutual learning, understanding

Topic 2: What criteria would one use for a go/no go decision?

  • Criteria should be developed from engagement through a collective decision making process
  • Does not have to be binary; conditional go/no-go is another option
    • Possible choices
      • Unconditional “go” / conditional “go” 
      • Permanent “no go” / temporary “no go” / conditional “no go” 
  • Start from criteria already developed (Oxford principles, Code of Conduct) 
  • Process needs safeguards against triggering ‘mitigation deterrence’, with clear measures for reversibility of the experiment and the overall program/process
  • Consider the time value of knowledge
  • Criteria for go-no-go should be an output of engagement exercises, rather than defined beforehand
  • The climate change context in which the decision is taking place is key