Law Commons^™

Several of the key, recurring questions which loom over climate engineering concern how countries would interact when some of them undertake or approve actions which might impact other countries. This chapter describes some international law which is applicable to climate engineering, with a focus on international environmental law. It closes with a brief synthesis and some recommendations for future developments. First, though, it introduces international law, and suggests why climate engineering is such a challenge for international environmental law and its scholars.

Many scholars argue that the international regulation of solar climate engineering should be developed within those existing legal institutions that have (near-) universal participation--such as those of the UNFCCC or the CBD--and often toward binding rules. I believe that it would be counterproductive, at least for the foreseeable future. It is presently not a relatively productive endeavour to dwell on how states might collectively govern technologies which do not yet exist; whose forms, benefits, risks, costs, and reversibilities remain unknown; and under what circumstances and for what purposes they might be used are likewise still indefinite. We should conceptualize the …