Professor Xavier Landes joins Brussels forum on solar radiation management governance and ethics
From May 27–29, Professor Xavier Landes participated in the Co-Create Forum in Brussels, a multistakeholder event focused on the governance of solar radiation management (SRM) research. Organised by the Co-Create project, the forum explored challenges like ethical research governance, public engagement, and applying ethical guidelines to research projects.
SSE Riga Professor Xavier Landes highlighted the importance of a robust ethics of deliberation based on compromise and emphasized the role trained ethicists could play in research projects from their earliest stages.
While global mitigation efforts have made progress — even rendering the high-emissions RCP8.5 scenario implausible — meeting the Paris Agreement targets remains uncertain. With the world likely to overshoot "safe" temperature thresholds by 2100, technologies like SRM are being explored, primarily through modeling and lab work.
The Co-Create project aims to craft ethical guidelines, in a participatory manner, for potential outdoor experiments. Regardless of one’s stance on SRM, this work is essential to prevent unregulated, unaccountable experiments.