Now This! Indigenous Sovereignty, Political Obliviousness and Governance Models for Solar Radiation Management Research

Abstract

Models are currently being outlined for governance of early research on Solar Radiation Management (SRM), a form of geoengineering. SRM includes techniques that decrease the earth’s and its atmosphere's absorption of solar energy such as adding light-scattering aerosols to the upper atmosphere and increasing the lifetime and reflectivity of low-altitude clouds” (Keith et al. 2010, 426). If implemented, the global effects of such SRM solutions will in some fashion impact everyone. Indigenous peoples, among other populations, are right to be concerned about how governance plans unfold. Governance, as opposed to government, refers to any approach to the development, implementation and assessment of global policy that harnesses the potential advantages of democratic coordination beyond voting for representatives, referendum and civil disobedience. Governance does not rely on state authority, but on the capacities of civil society, such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), private businesses and stakeholder groups, to work creatively either among themselves or in coordination with state agencies and representatives. Governance is often termed as steering rather than rowing collective action on important issues of global policy. The very mention of governance can alarm members of Indigenous peoples who already reel at a vision of a world where climate is influenced even more by nation states and programs and organizations of the United Nations (UN). While there are certainly exceptions in practice, civil society is by no means beholden to respect Indigenous peoples’ ethical concerns, cultural needs and political jurisdictions. Democratic coordination (i.e. steering) can transgress Indigenous peoples’ territories without their even being notified or consulted. What is more, consultation processes and co- or joint- management committees can be riddled with Euro-American biases about legitimate decision-making procedures, management strategies and knowledge. Proponents of any governance model for early SRM research are responsible for counteracting political obliviousness, which is the disposition to presume that Indigenous community members are individual citizens of nation states like Canada and Australia - as opposed to being members of distinct peoples whose preferred lifeways are encumbered by these nation states. I will argue that governance models can counteract political obliviousness by integrating into their core assumptions respect for Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty. This is only possible if the meaning of Indigenous sovereignty is adequately accounted for in governance models. This is a complex challenge that I undertake as much as feasible in this essay. I will begin in section 2 by laying out some of the general issues Indigenous peoples face in relation to climate change and, now, early SRM research. In section 3, I cover some of the governance models that are currently on the table for early SRM research. In section 4, I argue that these models are susceptible to political obliviousness against Indigenous peoples if they do not take action to explicitly counteract this disposition. In section 5, I argue for a way of respecting sovereignty that serves as the basis of a requirement for how to counteract political obliviousness in governance models.