For a while now, the financial services industry has understood its role within climate intervention. As a result, companies across the world in the financial sector have looked to become funders and to develop their ESG regulations, quickly and immediately. Yet in the speed to be compliant and sustainable, ethics can become lost from the conversation.
One thing that has driven companies’ decisions from the start is their own internally and externally sourced scientific research and advisory. However, Lisa Graumlich, president, AGU in a FinextraTV Unplugged interview said that: “The research has to be done with ethical principles and done in ways that are inclusive, representative and we need to carefully consider the risks as well as the benefit, we need to look at those trade-offs.”
To this point, some may question how research can be unethical in this sense, so long as funding and support are going toward climate intervention. Understandably, the presumption could be that if something is well-informed and researched, it deserves to be backed by investors. Yet, as Graumlich explained, a research project must be defined by the people it affects: “Funders can ensure that there’s adequate public participation in the research that includes assessment by the communities that may be affected by these activities because these are technologies that have the potential for global - as well as local - impacts.”
While climate intervention is a task with ever-increasing urgency, the impact created - particularly in local communities with reduced resource - is important to consider. Technologies are emerging as more powerful and can be used in ways we may not have been used to before, as a result, there is a caution that should be exercised not just in the deployment but also in the initial approach. Graumlich said: “Researchers can ensure that the research team is not just scientists and atmospheric physicists and engineers, but it’s also social scientists and ethicists who can work with us to integrate moral concepts of justice and fairness into the way we approach these very very big issues with potential unintended consequences.”
This is not just an issue with moral impact, either, Graumlich and the AGU regularly explain how diversity, inclusive science and ethics are important factors to the success of earth sciences. Reflecting on both the commercial and personal impacts not following guidelines can have, Graumlich said: “If we don’t have ethical guidelines, there's a risk that the research could be banned or it could go ahead without the adequate guidance and consultation and protective measures and that could impose financial risks to the funders and, of course, some potentially far-reaching impacts on society.”
Large scale climate intervention is often an alternative or an additive to reducing carbon emissions but with larger approaches come larger issues. The requirements and needs of these projects - often referred to as geoengineering - can cause problems for a range of local communities. Graumlich's belief is grounded in a desire to improve the world, without hurting the individual in the process. As such, this debate - and its guidelines - must continue to be developed. But, in an increasingly fraught political landscape, how successful will the world be in implementing ethical frameworks, and if we don’t, what will be the cost?