CLIMATE SOLUTIONS NEED EQUITABLE APPROACHES
AGU's position on climate intervention research
A "moonshot" that needs global oversight and local input
The Urgent Priority of a Healthy Climate Requires Enhanced Climate Intervention Research and Community Engagement” is the most recent update of AGU’s position, drafted by a panel of experts with input from the global scientific community and approved in April 2023.
Read AGU's Position Statement
What is an Ethical Framework for Climate Intervention?
AGU Releases White Paper on Climate Intervention
As the global threat of climate change forces society to consider options for managing and abating its impacts, a robust body of scientific evidence and an ethical framework should guide these decisions. On 1 June 2022, AGU released a whitepaper describing its plans to convene a panel of global experts to begin this development.
These ethical framework principles will focus on climate intervention in general, but with distinction between carbon dioxide removal (CDR), solar radiation management (SRM), and other climate-altering technologies. These principles will focus solely on the ethics of the research, experimentation and deployment of such measures, not the development of policy around the measures.
AGU is committed to ensuring that research on climate intervention strategies is inclusive, representative and just; does not make deployment inevitable; and does not undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions. We are committed to ensuring public participation in the development of ethical framework decision-making processes.
Read the Whitepaper
Event Schedule
Upcoming Events
Check Back Soon!
Past Events
12 December 2023
AGU Annual Meeting
Town Hall on the Ethical Framework (TH23N)
1:00 – 2:00 p.m. PT, 2010 – Moscone West
San Francisco, CA
3 December 2023
2023 UNFCCC Climate Change Conference (COP 28)
Panel Discussion on the Ethical Framework
Watch Now
23-27 October 2023
WCRP Open Science Conference 2023
Kigali, Rwanda
28-29 September 2023
Solar Geoengineering Futures: Interdisciplinary Research to Inform Decisionmaking
Washington, DC, USA
1-20 July 2023
The 28th General Assembly of IUGG
Berlin, Germany
26 June - 2 July 2023
68th IRAS Summer Conference
(Institute on Religion in an Age of Science)
New Hampshire, USA
26-30 June 2023
Sustainability Research & Innovation Conference
Panama
12-15 June 2023
Climate and Health for Africa
Washington, DC USA
5-15 June 2023
UNFCCC Bonn Climate Change Conference
23-28 April 2023
EGU General Assembly
Vienna, Austria
22-24 March 2023
UN 2023 Water Conference
New York
Meet our panel of experts
Meet the ETHICAL FRAMEWORK ADVISORY BOARD
Ethical Framework Principles for Climate Intervention Research
In October 2024, AGU issued its report featuring five principles suggested for researchers, funders, and policymakers.
Ethical Framework for Climate Intervention Advisory Board
Margaret Leinen
Dr. Margaret Leinen is the Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor for Marine Science of University of California at San Diego. She is an ocean biogeochemist and paleoceanographer whose research includes study of ocean carbon cycling and the role of the oceans in climate. Leinen is currently co-chair for the Decade Advisory Board for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. During 2017 and 2018 Leinen was a US Department of State Science Envoy for the oceans to Latin America and the Pacific.
Babatunde Abiodun
Babatunde Abiodun is an Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town, where he coordinates atmospheric science program and leads atmospheric modelling initiatives. He was an Adjunct Professor at the University Missouri Kansas City.
His expertise is in atmospheric model developments and applications. His research interest focuses on regional climate issues, including climate modelling, climate variability and change, land-atmosphere interaction, and solar radiation management. He has led a wide range of projects on weather and climate extremes, seasonal forecasting, climate change projections, impacts of geoengineering, and building climate resilience at regional scale and local scales.
Babatunde has published more than 90 peer-reviewed papers in international journals. He was a lead author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment Report and a lead author in the Global Environment Outlook 6th Assessment Report. He has also served in the editorial board of Springer Nature Applied Sciences Journal, Advances in Statistical Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography Journal, and the Progress in Earth and Planetary Science Journal.
Brad Ack
Brad is an environmental innovator 30+ year career has spanned from the tropical forests of Latin America, high deserts of the American southwest, and the US Pacific NW to extensive work throughout the global ocean. Brad has worked for both government and NGOs at senior levels, at the intersection of science, policy and innovation, designing and implementing innovative conservation and sustainability initiatives.
Brad currently serves as Executive Director and Chief Innovation Officer for Ocean Visions, a partnership of leading North American research and academic institutions and innovators, investors and practitioners of ocean restoration. Ocean Visions is working to build momentum for a new ocean-climate repair and solutions agenda; to unlock new intellectual and financial investments in ocean-climate solutions; to source, develop and scale innovations that repair and restore critical components of the ocean-climate system.
Previously Brad served as Senior Vice President, Oceans at WWF-US; Regional Director-Americas for the Marine Stewardship Council; and Executive Director of the Puget Sound Recovery Program in the State of Washington. He directed conservation programs for the Grand Canyon Trust and started his career in Latin America working on sustainable development around protected areas.
Mashael AlShalan
Princess Mashael AlShalan is the Founding Partner, Aeon Strategy, Riyadh, K.S.A. Aeon Strategy aims to lead Saudi Arabia towards a sustainable future by designing and scaling pioneering, science-backed, researched based business and policy solutions that create and sustain equal benefits for the nation’s economy, ecology and society, and to contribute to environmentally conscious energy and climate policy and infrastructure development. Her research focuses on climate policy, global governance, carbon emissions and the impact of climate change.
She has been involved in various international events and conferences, including side sessions at the UN Climate Change Conferences in Glasgow in 2021 and Sharm El-Sheikh in 2022. She holds a Masters Degree in International Relations and Affairs, Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, NY, USA, and B.A. Language Interpretation and Translation, King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA.
Vinya Ariyaratne
Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne is the President of Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of Sri Lanka. Sarvodaya is Sri Lanka’s largest non-governmental grass roots development organization. Dr. Ariyaratne is a Public Health Specialist. He also serves as the Chair of the Sarvodaya Institute of Higher Learning (SIHL). He has extensive experience in community health, development, disaster management and peace building.
Working both at the grassroots level and at policy level, Dr. Ariyaratne has promoted popularization of science and technology in rural communities of Sri Lanka. Dr. Ariyaratne obtained Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) Degree from the De La Salle University, Philippines, and Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) degree from the Johns Hopkins University U.S.A., Master of Science M.Sc. and Doctor of Medicine (MD) in Community Medicine from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, U.K. and a Chevening Fellow at the Nuffield Institute of the Faculty of Medicine and Health of the University of Leeds.
In 2012, Dr. Ariyaratne was attached to the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of the Brandeis University U.S.A. as a Visiting Senior Lecturer and Feldman Engaged Scholar. In 2014, Dr. Ariyaratne received the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Schwab Foundation/World Economic Forum.
Paul Artaxo
Prof. Paulo Artaxo got his Ph.D. in Environmental Physics at the University of São Paulo in 1985. At his Pos Doc, he worked at the University of Antwerp, Belgium; the University of Lund and Stockholm, Sweden; NASA Goddard, the University of Harvard, USA. He is a professor of environmental physics at the University of São Paulo and is also a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz. His scientific activities focus on global climate change, Amazonian ecosystem functioning, and urban air pollution. He has a strong international role in fostering scientific growth in developing countries. He was a Lead Author of the IPCC WG1 for AR4, AR5, and AR6. He was also Lead Author of the IPCC SRCCL – Special Report on Climate Change and Land, and the IPCC geoengineering task force. He served on the UNEP Science Advisory Panel for GEO-6.
Paulo Artaxo has published more than 462 scientific papers, including 27 papers in the Science and Nature family of journals. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the TWAS (The World Academy of Sciences), and is vice president of the São Paulo Academy of Sciences. He is vice president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Sciences (SBPC). He received many prizes: Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), the Earth Sciences Prize from TWAS in 2007, the Almirante Alvaro Alberto Prize in 2016, and the CONFAP Prize for Science and Technology in 2021, among others. He was nominated for the award from Clarivate Analytics as “Most Influential Researcher” in 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
Araya Asfaw
Dr. Araya Asfaw serves as Executive Director of the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network, an organization working towards uniting academia and practitioners to promote environmental conservation, natural resource management, while facilitating strengthening and advocating for sustainable development and environmental governance across the Horn of Africa.
Currently, the Network consists of more than 40 members, of which Ethiopia has the largest share of about 40 percent. Dr. Asfaw earned his PhD in Physics, Master of Engineering and BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Howard University, Washington DC. He worked as a research scientist at various national laboratories in the US (including the National Institute of Standard and Technology, Center for Advanced Microstructure and Devices, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Advanced Light Source of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) before joining the physics Department of Addis Ababa University in 1996.
He served as Dean of the Faculty of Science at Addis Ababa University for four years. As Dean, he also facilitated the transformation of the Geophysical Observatory and initiated the establishment of the Gullele Botanic Garden, a joint programme between Addis Ababa City Administration and Addis Ababa University.
Govindasamy Bala
Govindasamy Bala is a Professor at the Center for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India. His research interests include modelling of climate change, climate system feedbacks, carbon and water cycles, land cover change, solar geoengineering, and the global and regional monsoon systems. Prof. Baa has served as a Lead and Contributing Author for the 5th (2013) and 6th (2021) scientific assessment of climate change by the IPCC, and is currently a member of the Earth Commission, Future Earth. He was also an author of the UNEP’s independent expert review report on solar radiation modification research and deployment (2023).
Miranda Boettcher
Dr. Miranda Boettcher is a Research Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, and an affiliated member of the Environmental Governance Section at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
She is currently working on the German-government (BMBF)-funded project ASMASYS (Unified ASsessment framework for proposed methods of MArine CDR and interim knowledge SYnthesiS), developing a transdisciplinary assessment framework for marine carbon removal, with a focus on identifying political (in)feasibility frontiers. Additionally, Miranda is a member of the United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) Working Group 41: Ocean Interventions for Climate Mitigation.
She is currently an Earth System Governance Research Fellow. She was an Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford's Institute for Science, Innovation and Society in 2018, and a Visiting Researcher at the Australian-German Climate and Energy College at the University of Melbourne in 2019. She has previously worked as a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, Research Analyst for Foresight Intelligence in Berlin, Germany, an Investigator at the Mintz Group in San Francisco, USA, and a Graduate Researcher at the University of Heidelberg's Department of International Relations in Heidelberg, Germany.
Clara Boto
Clara Botto (early-career Advisory Board member) is the Director of Outreach at the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering (DSG) and has been engaged with sustainable development at a grassroots and international level, from arts to politics, for the past 9 years. She co-founded the platform SRM Youth Watch, seeking to inform and capacitate young people on the governance of Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) technologies, following her outreach activities with the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G) Youth Voices for Emerging Climate Governance project. As part of that, she was an observer in the Marine Cloud Brightening fieldwork taking place at the Great Barrier Reef, participated and spoke in several events, and wrote contributions to the UN.
Clara is currently also on the Advisory Board of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair, a climate fellow with UNU-UNFCCC, a campaigner with World’s Youth for Climate Justice seeking an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice, and a New European Voice on Existential Risk with the European Leadership Network. She holds a MSc in International Development and Public Policy, having written her thesis as a pedagogical public policy case study of deep-sea mining in Portugal, and a BSc in Business with focus in Creative Economy and Marketing, where she researched about sustainable fashion and the universities' lack of preparation to equip youth for sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro.
Antonio Busalacchi
Dr. Antonio J. Busalacchi Jr., has been president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) since August 2016. Prior to his appointment at UCAR, he served as director of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) and professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland. After receiving a Ph.D. in oceanography from Florida State University, Dr. Busalacchi began his professional career at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Ines Camilloni
Dr. Ines Camilloni is Associate Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and Researcher of the National Research Council (CONICET) of Argentina at the Center for Ocean and Atmosphere Sciences (CIMA / CONICET-UBA) and the Franco-Argentinian Institute for the Study of Climate and its Impacts (UMI-IFAECI/CNRS-CONICET-UBA). She is currently member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research and of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology of UNESCO.
She has a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires. Her research focuses on climate variability and change in South America, especially in cities and climate change and in the regional potential impacts of solar radiation modification. She has authored several peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, book chapters and books. She has participated in and coordinated many national and international research projects related to these subjects. She has been Lead Author of the IPCC AR5-WG1 and SR15 reports and Review Editor of the IPCC AR6-WG1.
Michael Conathan
Michael (Mike) Conathan is an ocean policy specialist, writer, and editor with over 15 years of experience driving action on international, federal, and regional marine and maritime initiatives with a focus on growing the sustainable Blue Economy. He currently serves as a Senior Policy Fellow for Ocean and Climate with the Aspen Institute’s Energy & Environment Program and runs an independent consulting business supporting clients in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors with their government relations, convening, and policy development needs.
Prior to joining Aspen in 2018, he launched the ocean policy program at the Center for American Progress after spending five years supporting Senator Olympia Snowe (R, ME) as the lead staffer on the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard. Mike prioritizes relationships, listening, and mediation in his work which centers on the belief that compromise and collaboration are fundamental to durable policy solutions.
Mike holds an M.A. in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island and a B.A. in English Literature from Georgetown University and now lives in South Portland, Maine with his lobster-catching wife, Dungeons & Dragons-obsessed teenage son, and frisbee-chasing chocolate lab.
Chris Field
Dr. Chris Field is the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies. His research focuses on climate change, especially solutions that improve lives now, decrease the amount of future warming, and support vibrant economies. Recent projects emphasize decreasing risks from coastal flooding and wildfires.
Field was the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, a position he held from 2002 to 2016. He was co-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 2008-2015, where he led the effort on the IPCC Special Report on “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation” (2012) and the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014) on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.
His widely cited work has earned many recognitions, including election to the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Max Planck Research Award, the Roger Revelle Medal, and the Japan Prize.
Karen Florini
Karen Florini is Vice President for Programs at Climate Central, where she oversees Climate Central’s program initiatives and engages with key strategic partners.
Prior to joining Climate Central in 2017, Karen served as Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change at the State Department. Previously she spent more than two decades at Environmental Defense Fund, working both on environmental health and on climate change.
She earned a law degree at Harvard, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Environmental Law Review, but now regards herself as a recovering lawyer. As an undergraduate at Oberlin College, she dual-majored in biology and environmental policy.
Stephen Gardiner
Stephen M. Gardiner is Professor of Philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Professor of the Human Dimensions of the Environment at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he is also Director of the Program on Ethics. Steve is the author of A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford, 2011), and co-author of Debating Climate Ethics (Oxford, 2016). His edited books include The Ethics of "Geoengineering" the Global Climate (Routledge, 2021), The Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Ethics (Oxford, in press) and The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (Oxford, 2016). His latest book, Dialogues on Climate Justice (co-authored with Arthur Obst), is written both for general readers and college students. It tells the story of Hope, a fictional protagonist whose life is shaped by climate change, thorough a series of conversations about ethics and justice in a climate-challenged world.
Stephen Hammer
Dr. Stephen Hammer serves as an Advisor, focused on International Climate Policy and Strategy, with the World Bank’s Climate Change Group in Washington DC. In this role he leads the Bank’s climate-related engagement with the G7, G20, UNFCCC, and the UN Secretary General’s climate team. He serves as a key advisor to senior management, and represents the World Bank on numerous global commissions and working groups focused on climate finance, and was one of the key movers behind the creation of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, a group which he continues to advise on strategic matters.
Prior to his current role he served as Manager, Climate Policy for the World Bank Group, where he led a team of 60 scientists, economists, technical experts, and consultants focused on frontier research on climate change and development topics and the provision of climate-related advisory services to clients and Bank teams.
Before joining the World Bank, Dr. Hammer was a member of the faculty at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), and prior to that, he taught at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he founded and directed the Urban Energy Program. Dr. Hammer holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.
Bruce Hewitson
Dr. Bruce Hewitson is the South Africa National Research Chair on Climate Change and director of the Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG) at the University of Cape Town.
Research interests span a range of issues on regional climate change, including climate modeling, downscaling, the interface of climate science and society, and capacity building of young scientists and for decision makers. A special interest is around individual and institutional ethics and values in responding to climate change in the context of the global north-south dynamic.
Bruce was a coordinating lead author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 3rd, 4th, 5th Assessment Reports and lead author on the IPCC 6th Assessment Report. He has held a range of international responsibilities and currently co-chairs the World Climate Research Program’s core project on Regional Information for Society. He has led a wide range of projects focused on new analytical methods, climate change and cities, regional climate change projections, seasonal forecasting, climate uncertainty, and the intersection of climate information and ethics.
Bruce is currently focusing on new ways to enhance the usability of regional climate information for decision makers in contrasting contexts.
Elisabeth Holland
Elisabeth Holland is the Professor of Ocean and Climate Change and the Director of the Pacific Center for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) at the University of the South Pacific (USP), one of only two regional universities in the world serving 12 Pacific Island countries: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.
She recently served as Norway-Pacific Chair in the Oceans and Climate Change, a joint appointment of USP and the University of Bergen (UiB) based at USP’s Laucala Bay campus in Fiji. Professor Holland was USP’s Professor of Climate Change from 2012-2019. Professor Holland was the first ecological scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado where she became a senior scientist and interdisciplinary research leader. Professor Holland was a founding member of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, the 17th Max Planck Institute founded following German reunification.
Professor Holland brings more than 30 years of climate change research experience to the Pacific. She served as an author in all six cycles of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, including the recent Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Elisabeth’s current research focuses on Pacific ocean climate interactions and the science policy interface. She supports the empowerment of Pacific students and communities to build climate and disaster resilient futures. Professor Holland has a profound understanding of the climate risks facing the people and cultures of the Pacific Ocean and Islands.
Marion Hourdequin
Marion Hourdequin is a Professor of Philosophy at Colorado College (Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA). Her research focuses on environmental ethics, climate ethics, and climate justice. She is the author of Environmental Ethics: From Theory to Practice (Bloomsbury) and has published work in a variety of journals, including Environmental Ethics; Environmental Values; Ethics & the Environment; Ethics, Policy, & Environment; Science, Technology, & Human Values; and Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.
Professor Hourdequin is President of the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) and Associate Editor for Environmental Ethics. She recently served on a National Academy of Sciences study committee focused on approaches to solar geoengineering research and research governance. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at Duke University (2005) and her undergraduate degree in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University (1995).
Anna-Maria Hubert
Anna-Maria Hubert is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary. She is also an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation, and Society at the University of Oxford. Anna-Maria’s research interests lie generally in the area of public international law, focusing on the law of the sea, international environmental law, international human rights law, and law and policy relating to the regulation of science and emerging technologies.
Anna-Maria has published widely on the topic of the regulation and governance of climate engineering. From 2015 to 2018, Anna-Maria was the lead on the Geoengineering Research Governance Project (GRGP), a joint initiative of the University of Calgary, IASS-Potsdam and the University of Oxford. The project sought to enhance understanding about the complex issues posed by climate engineering techniques, and to analyse the changes required in governance and legal frameworks necessary to enable effective oversight in this space in line with accepted principles. A key output from this project with the development of a draft Code of Conduct for Responsible Geoengineering Research (2017).
From 2013 to 2015, Anna-Maria worked at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany, as part of an interdisciplinary research group studying the implications climate engineering interventions. She has acted as a consultant and provided information and advice to governments, treaty bodies and intergovernmental organisations, NGOs, and scientific institutions on this topic. This included serving as advisor to IUCN at the meetings of the 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter and its 1996 Protocol, which led to the adoption of an amendment on marine geoengineering in 2013.
Peter Irvine
Dr. Peter Irvine is an assistant professor at UCL Earth Sciences and science advisor to the Degrees Initiative, an NGO that funds developing world researchers to study Solar Radiation Modification (SRM). His research addresses the climate response to SRM proposals as well as their broader societal, ethical and governance implications. He also lectures on climate change and co-hosts the Challenging Climate podcast.
Penehuro Fatu Lefale
Penehuro Fatu Lefale is an internationally acclaimed climate and policy analyst. Lefale has a long history of work in international climate science and policy implementation – most notable of his achievements includes: work at the Second World Climate Conference (SWCC) in 1990, where, together with a small team from Small Island Developing States (SIDS), established the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS); he was one of the first Pacific people involved in the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); and, a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Nobel Peace Prize Contributor in 2007, in his role as Lead Author for the Small Islands chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).
As Director of LeA International Consultants (NZ), Lefale is the Senior Climate Policy advisor to the Government of Tokelau, where he co-developed the Living with Change Strategy and Implementation Plans that guide Tokelau’s climate program. He is a Professional Member of the American Meteorological Society and the Royal Society of New Zealand, and has authored a number of papers on climate science and climate policy from a Small Islands perspective.
Amparo Martínez-Arroyo
Professor Amparo Martínez-Arroyo is a research scientist at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has a Bachelor's and Master's degree from UNAM and a Doctorate in Ecology from the University of Barcelona. Her research fields have focused on atmospheric interactions as well as those between science and society in a changing climate, participating in national and international interdisciplinary research projects.
She has extensive experience in the application of scientific knowledge to public policies and decision-making processes in Mexico, where she has held positions as Director of the UNAM Center for Atmospheric Sciences from 2009 to 2013 and General Director of the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change from 2013 to 2021. For eight years she participated as a focal point in the IPCC and as a delegate to the COPs of the UNFCCC, representing Mexico. She is currently a member of the Scientific-Policy Advisory Committee of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. Her current interests are related to the construction of science-based regional strategies in the face of global change, with broad and inclusive participation of local communities.
Taylor McKie
Taylor McKie (early-career Advisory Board member) is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. She studies physical oceanography and her research focuses on small-scale upper ocean physical dynamics and how climate change impacts their behavior. Taylor has participated at COP27 and served as invited panelist in several side events. She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and has been inducted into the Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society. Taylor received her Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Outside of research, Taylor is known for her work in university climate action, environmental justice and advocacy. She hopes to pursue a career in climate policy post-graduation and contribute to efforts driving mitigation strategies and increasing climate resilience within communities most impacted.
Craig McLean
Craig McLean, is the recently retired director for NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), which is responsible for NOAA’s research enterprise, including laboratories and programs across the country. Prior to this position, McLean served as deputy assistant administrator for OAR’s Programs and Administration, as executive officer of the National Ocean Service, and was the founding director of NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration.
McLean served in uniform for nearly 25 years, retiring from NOAA's Commissioned Corps in the grade of captain. He served aboard hydrographic, oceanographic, and fisheries research ships. McLean also served as NOAA’s acting Chief Scientist for the past five years, and is a past U.S rep to Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO.
McLean is also an attorney and has practiced marine resource law for NOAA. He has been awarded the Department of Commerce Silver and Bronze Medals, the NOAA Corps Commendation Medal, and Special Achievement Medal. He is a frequent speaker on ocean related subjects, drawing on his diverse NOAA career experience in fisheries, coastal and marine area management, directing research, law, and both surface and submerged marine operations. He is a past-president and chairman of the Sea-Space Symposium.
Axel Michaelowa
Axel Michaelowa holds a PhD in Economics and has been working on international climate policy instruments and the UNFCCC process since 1994. Since 2007 he is leading a research group on climate policy at the University of Zurich`s Institute of Political Science. Since 2003 he is Senior Founding Partner of the think tank Perspectives. From 1999 to 2006, Axel was head of the Research Programme ”International Climate Policy” at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA).
Axel is currently serving as member of the Board of the constituency of Research and Independent NGOs observing the UNFCCC negotiations, as well as the Executive Committee of the Adaptation Benefits Mechanism, where he is vice chair of the methodology panel. Moreover, he is a member of the roster of experts of the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body. Axel was lead author on international mitigation policies in the 4th and 5th IPCC Assessment Reports. Between 2006 and 2013, Axel was on the CDM Registration and Issuance Team for the CDM Executive Board and evaluated over 175 CDM projects. He serves on the editorial boards of the peer reviewed journals “Climate Policy”, “Climate and Development” and “Greenhouse Gas Measurement & Management."
Axel is one of the leading experts in the field of international climate policies, market mechanism design and the UNFCCC process and has over 400 academic publications on these issues. He has participated in UNFCCC negotiations since COP 1 in 1995 and provided related support to the governments of Honduras, Mexico, Morocco, Qatar, Sweden, Tunisia and the UAE. He has done capacity building in over 40 developing countries, ranging from Algeria to Yemen, with a focus in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia. "
Aasima Kamal Mowni
Aasima Kamal Mowni (early-career Advisory Board member) is a climate change advocate currently pursuing her master’s degree in climate change and development at the Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB). She is one of the recipients of the COLOCAL scholarship for the program, which supports her research on community-based adaptation in the coastal regions of Bangladesh. Aasima is also the co-founder of SRM Youth Watch, a project committed to enhancing the global youth's capacity to engage in emerging discussions concerning the governance of solar radiation modification (SRM). SRM YW has emerged from the Youth Voices for Emerging Climate Governance program, hosted by the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G). Aasima's academic journey is marked by her remarkable achievements, including graduating Magna Cum Laude from IUB's Department of Environmental Science and Management in September 2022.
Furthermore, Aasima brings valuable research experience from her time at the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), where she focused on understanding the complex relationship between climate change and public health. In addition to her academic expertise, she brings over three years of teaching experience in extracurricular activities at Playpen School. Aasima is deeply committed to addressing the ethical challenges posed by climate change through creative and innovative approaches.
Helene Muri
Helene Muri is a research professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She has been actively involved with research on climate intervention since 2011 including multiple EU projects on carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification. Muri sits on the scientific steering committee of both GeoMIP (Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project) and CDR-MIP (Carbon Dioxide Removal Intercomparison Project). She is involved with the Degrees Modelling Fund and DECIMALS supporting the Global South in climate intervention research.
Muri has contributed to the assessment reports of Working Groups I and III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She has a PhD in climate physics from the University of Oxford (2009) and BSc in Meteorology from the University of Reading, UK. After a post-doc at Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, she joined the University of Oslo, Norway as a researcher in climate intervention, before joining NTNU in 2018.
Carlos Nobre
Carlos Nobre is an Earth System scientist from Brazil, currently associated with Institute for Advanced Studies, USP. He obtained a PhD in Meteorology at MIT in 1983. Nobre’s work mostly focuses on the Amazon and its impacts on the Earth system. He chaired the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA). He has been an author of several IPCC reports, including the 2007 report that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
He was director of Center of Weather Prediction and Climate Studies (CPTEC-INPE), and the creator of Center for Earth System Science (CCST-INPE) and of the National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN). He was National Secretary for R&D Policies at Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation and President of Brazil’s Agency for Post-Graduate Education (CAPES). He is co-chair of the Science Panel for the Amazon (www.theamazonwewant.org) and the director of the Amazonia 4.0 project to promote a standing forest bioeconomy for the Amazon (www.amazonia4.org). He was International Secretary of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
He is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the World Academy of Sciences. He was awarded several prizes including the Volvo Environmental Prize and the AAAS Science Diplomacy Award.
Daniel O'Connor
Dr. Daniel O’Connor is the Head of Research Environment at Wellcome and until 2019 was the Head of Humanities and Social Science. He has a PhD in the History of Medicine and was previously on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He has published articles on the ethical challenges of using social media in healthcare, on the ethics of human enhancement, and on the history and politics of bioethics.
The Research Environment team works to ensure that all of the research that Wellcome funds is open, engaged, ethical, efficient and equitable. The team leads Wellcome’s activities in research culture, open research and open access, bioethics, the social and cultural impact of research, researcher-led engagement, and connecting Wellcome’s community of researchers.
Franklin Opijah
Dr Franklin Joseph Opijah is a Senior lecturer in the Department of Meteorology of the University of Nairobi, specializing in dynamic meteorology and modelling of processes and systems in the tropics that define and control weather and climate on all time and space scales, including weather and climate transforms consequential to land use/cover and global changes in the tropics, to better the understanding and uptake of weather and climate information and products in Africa, as well as to foster links and data exchanges among climate service providers, while striving for academic excellence and assisting others acquire knowledge and competencies to reach their full academic potential.
Dr. Opijah has a distinctive interest in tropical weather/climate and prediction on all spatiotemporal scales; ensemble prediction system techniques; weather/climate transforms consequential to regional and global forcing, land use/cover change, urbanisation and surface heterogeneity, with the goal of improving the predictability, uptake, and application of weather and climate information in Eastern Africa.
Silvia Peppoloni
Sylvia Peppoloni is a PhD geologist, researcher at the Italian Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. Her scientific activity concerns georisks, geohazards and their communication to society. She is an international leader of geoethics, fully involved in the base research on philosophy of geosciences, focusing on ethical, social and cultural implications of geoscience knowledge, research and practice, and on key concepts for society such as sustainability, prevention, adaptation and geo-education.
Professor at the University of Rome "Sapienza" and Viterbo "Tuscia" (2008-2011), she is founding member and Secretary General of the International Association for Promoting Geoethics, Director of the School on Geoethics and Natural Issues, Councillor of the International Union of Geological Sciences (2018-2022), Chair of the Ethical Advisory Board of the Integrated Carbon Observation System, Councillor of the Geological Society of Italy, and Chair of the Commission on Geoethics of the International Union of the Geological Sciences.
Work package/task leader and member of advisory boards in European projects, editor of volumes on geoethics, she is Editor in Chief of the SpringerBrief in Geoethics and of the Journal of Geoethics and Social Geosciences. She has been awarded in Italy with prizes for science communication and natural literature. Among her publications, she has written the chapter on Ethics for the Elsevier Dictionary of Geology.
Christopher Preston
Christopher J. Preston is a writer and professor based in Missoula, MT. His work at the University of Montana centers on wildlife, technology, and climate change. He edited the first collection of essays on the ethics of Climate Engineering in 2012 (Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management). He followed it by editing Climate Justice and Geoengineering in 2016. His award-winning book, The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species, and Reengineering Our World, has been translated into six languages. His new book, Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think About Animals investigates a number of species back from the brink of extinction. He meets the scientists, indigenous leaders, and activists responsible for their return and uncovers what these tenacious species have to teach.
Christopher has written for The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Discover, The Conversation, Aeon, Slate.com, and The BBC. He gives talks in state parks, libraries, and breweries across Montana to audiences interested in conservation and technology. In early 2023, he won an annual award from the International Society for Environmental Ethics for his work as a public philosopher.
Akossiwa Quashie
Professor Akossiwa Quashie serves as 1st Vice Chairperson for WASCAL (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use). Professor Quashie is a specialist in biotechnology and plant physiology and is also member of the National Bioethics Council of TOGO for a few years and responsible from next year for a bilingual master's degree in biotechnologies and biosafety at the University of Lomé. She also serves as Vice-Chair of the Biosafety Committee with of the Ministry of the Environment in Togo.
WASCAL is a large-scale research-focused Climate Service Centre designed to help tackle this challenge and thereby enhance the resilience of human and environmental systems to climate change and increased variability. It does so by strengthening the research infrastructure and capacity in West Africa related to climate change and by pooling the expertise of ten West African countries and Germany. The WASCAL Competence Centre, a newly established institute in West Africa, carries out research and provides science-based advice to policymakers and stakeholders on climate change impacts, mitigation, and adaptation measures.
Alan Robock
Alan Robock is a Distinguished Professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1970 with a B.A. in Meteorology, and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an S.M. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1977, both in Meteorology. Before graduate school, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. He was a professor at the University of Maryland, 1977-1997, and the State Climatologist of Maryland, 1991-1997, before coming to Rutgers in 1998.
Prof. Robock has published more than 500 articles, including more than 285 peer-reviewed papers. His areas of research include climate intervention (geoengineering), and the climatic effects of nuclear war and volcanic eruptions. He is the co-founder and co-leader of the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP). He serves as Editor of Reviews of Geophysics, the most highly-cited journal in the Earth Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the AMS Jule Charney Medal. Prof. Robock was a Lead Author of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Dominic Roser
Dr. Dominic Roser is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. As a philosopher with a background in economics, he works in the areas of political philosophy and ethics. His research focus lies on the ethics of climate change, intergenerational justice, global justice, risk, non-ideal theory, human rights, effective altruism, and the normative underpinnings of economics. He was previously a Research Fellow at the Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations at the University of Oxford, UK.
Vladimir Ryabinin
Dr. Vladimir Ryabinin is the immediate past Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO and Assistant Director-General of UNESCO. He is an oceanographer, marine engineer, climatologist, and emeritus meteorologist of the Russian Federation. He originated several mathematical models for the ocean, atmosphere, wind waves, etc., and is an author of hundreds of scientific publications. Since 1980s, Dr Ryabinin has been involved in various capacities in the activities of the United Nations and contributed to core design and coordination of such international initiatives, as the Global Ocean Observing System and the World Climate Research Programme. In 2020, the Marine Technology Society awarded him with the Compass International Award as a recognition for his leadership in the design of international initiatives and as a champion for inclusivity in the planning team for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).
Peter Schlosser
Dr. Peter Schlosser is the vice president and vice provost of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. He is the University Professor of Global Futures and holds joint appointments in the School of Sustainability, the School of Earth and Space Exploration in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. The laboratory has been launched to harness the innovative capacity of academia and develop options for sound management of the planet. Professor Schlosser joined ASU in 2018.
Professor Schlosser is one of the world’s leading earth scientists, with expertise in the Earth’s hydrosphere and how humans affect the planet’s natural state. He comes to ASU from Columbia University where he was the Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics and Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and the deputy director and director of research at the Earth Institute. He also was a member and the founding chair of the Earth Institute faculty and a member of the senior staff at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. His prior positions included a professorship at the University of Heidelberg and a visiting professorship at the University of Washington-Seattle. He is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences, an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the Explorers Club.
Benjamin Sovacool
Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool is Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University in the United States, where he is the Founding Director of the Institute for Global Sustainability, as well as Professor of Energy Policy at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School in the United Kingdom. He is also University Distinguished Professor of Business & Social Sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Professor Sovacool works as a researcher and consultant on issues pertaining to energy policy, energy justice, energy security, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation. More specifically, his research focuses on renewable energy and energy efficiency, the politics of large-scale energy infrastructure, the ethics and morality of energy decisions, designing public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity, and building adaptive capacity to the consequences of climate change. He was a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2022, and he serves on the Board on Environmental Change and Society for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in the United States. With much coverage of his work in the international news media, he is one of the most highly cited global researchers on issues bearing on controversies in energy and climate policy.
Ben Stanhouse
Ben Stanhouse (early-career Advisory Board member) has professional experience across sustainability and climate change, with particular interests in carbon removal and solar radiation modification. Much of his work focuses on helping youth navigate the science-policy-implementation nexus. He served as Energy Contact Point at COP28 and COP27 for YOUNGO, the official Youth Constituency to the UN Climate Change process, and co-led the creation of the Dubai Youth Climate Dialogues with the COP28 Presidency. Ben has also served on the Advisory Boards of the Global Youth Climate Action Fund and Clean Growth Leadership Network, among other environmental organisations.
In his day job, he works as a Sustainability Consultant in London, building green businesses from the ground-up and helping public and private sector entities to enable the net-zero transition. Ben holds an MSc in Energy Systems from the University of Oxford, where his research focused on collective responsibility in scaling durable carbon sequestration, and a BSc in Earth Science from Imperial College London, where he graduated with the Governors' Prize.
Masa Sugiyama
Masahiro (Masa) Sugiyama is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Future Initiatives(IFI), the University of Tokyo(UTokyo). He holds a Ph.D. in climate science and a master’s degree in technology and policy, both from MIT. Prior to joining UTokyo, he was a researcher at the Socio-Economic Research Center, the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry. He joined UTokyo in April, 2014.
He is a lead author of the Working Group III’s contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC). He is a member of Harvard SCoPEx (Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment) Advisory Committee, and is also a member of the Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) Working Group 41 Ocean Interventions for Climate Change Mitigation. His research areas include scenario analysis of climate and energy policy and governance of climate engineering from the public engagement perspective.
Jianhua Xu
Jianhua Xu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Management, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering and Institute for Global Health and Development at Peking University. Dr. Xu received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering and English at Dalian University of Technology, M.S. in Environmental Sciences at Peking University, and Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. She joined Peking University in 2009 after working at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for one and a half years. Her research interests are environmental policy and management and risk regulation and governance.
She has been doing research in the specific areas of regulation and governance and attitudes and behaviors in environmental and risk domains. In the area of regulation and governance, her focuses are on factors shaping the formation of regulations, the impacts of regulations, and policy design and evaluation; in the area of attitudes and behaviors, her focuses are on factors influencing environmental attitudes and behaviors, designing and evaluating policies driving the change in environmental attitudes and behaviors, and risk perception and communication.