DSG’s Youth Engagement Program is building an Early Career Researchers Network (ECRN) to provide a platform for young people to access diverse and science-based information and enable constructive engagement in deliberation about solar geoengineering (SG). 

The Early Career Researchers Network on SG will be a community of young academics from all over the world across different disciplines who are looking at or engaging in the topic of climate-altering technologies, with a focus on solar geoengineering. Such a platform can contribute not only to knowledge and opportunity sharing but can also ensure a culture of support. We hope that this network will also be a very valuable group to assist policymakers in making evidence-based decisions on SG in the coming years and will contribute to ensuring intergenerational justice in the science-policy interface.

Following several interactions with early career researchers in SG around the world and across disciplines, it has become clear that they lack opportunities to interact with other young academics who are also looking into this topic. This is even more challenging in the social sciences and humanities, which has resulted in infrequent interdisciplinary exchanges. Considering that solar geoengineering is an increasingly contentious topic, the lack of interaction hinders knowledge sharing and discourages many young academics from pursuing research in this field. Furthermore, it makes it harder for many of them to understand the bigger picture of SG discussions at a global level, as they are not well connected to one another.

Through DSG’s network, we hope to break down these silos to foster collaboration and learning across disciplines and regions, create a safe space for a generation of young researchers who are working in a challenging field, and encourage more academics to contribute in SG governance and justice discussions.

Our first step in building this network is to understand how it would be most useful to early career researchers. To that end, we’ve developed a survey to gather information on ideas and needs from young researchers.  View the survey.

The survey closes on April 19, 2024.