By Shuchi Talati, Founder & Executive Director
Effective climate intervention research must be rigorously governed and conducted with public interest at its core. In this vein, I am excited to share that I will be joining the ARIA Oversight Committee for the program on Exploring Climate Cooling Options, launching today. The research program will be open to applicants from around the world and the Oversight Committee will be an independent entity to strengthen research governance.
This specific program aims to fund research required to reach more definitive conclusions on whether any potential approaches for cooling the Earth could be feasible, scalable, and safe, including small-scale outdoor experiments. ARIA has consulted with physical scientists as well as governance and social science experts around the world to build eligibility criteria and the foundation for a careful approach. I am excited and honored to work with a public program that will ensure that SRM experiments will abide by rigorous governance standards that the committee will shape.
The best version of SRM research is built for the public good: scientifically sound, transparent, responsible, safe, publicly engaged, and without any profit motivation. I believe that ARIA is funding research in this specific context. I look forward to bringing my experiences as a former co-chair of the independent advisory committee to oversee SCoPEx, my learnings from my work in the public sector and, and the goals we are pursuing at DSG to build governance norms in this field before it’s too late.
My engagement will not be in an official DSG capacity but will no doubt be an important part of how our organizational work is perceived. I look forward to communicating openly about ARIA’s Oversight Committee work focused on pursuing governance for SRM research.