The Geographies of Solar Geoengineering Funding 2020-2025

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Science, Knowledge, and Expertise

Abstract

This paper examines the geographies of funding for the field of solar geoengineering (SG) beginning in 2020 and concluding in 2025. SG is a technological proposal aimed at limiting warming through large-scale atmospheric modification with planet-wide impacts. Primarily focusing on where organizations that fund SG activities are located, as well as the locations of organizations they fund, this research explores the connections and distinctions between core and periphery countries in their approach to SG as a response to global climate change. Using a framework drawing upon world systems theory, ecologically unequal exchange, and metabolic rift perspectives, this research finds that the overwhelming majority of funding originates in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe, and is directed towards researchers and organizations in those same regions. This highlights that SG is a proposal centered in core countries, with little buy in, and in some cases active opposition from periphery countries.

Author

• Jared Weld Sanborn, University of Utah