Addressing risks and trade-offs in governance

Climate change and climate-altering technologies pose an emerging risk governance challenge involving risk-risk trade-offs both regarding potential outcomes as well as governance choices. Trade-offs characterize not only various emergent governance and policy design choices but also how research is conducted and communicated. This chapter identifies numerous risks and trade-offs and offers several steps that could be pursued in the near-to medium-term to gradually overcome trade-offs and strengthen opportunities for governance strategies that attenuate multiple risks. Many of these steps aim at strengthening capacities for anticipation, cooperation, and joint decision-making, which would appear essential qualities for addressing the risk-risk trade-offs posed by climate change and countervailing risks associated with potential CDR and SRM applications. Suggested measures in the context of governance processes include: strengthening capacities for international inter-agency collaboration, coordination, and learning; proactively exploring how specific governance challenges match particular international agencies’ mandates; conducting policy impact assessments in the context of national mitigation policy planning. Suggested measures in the realm of research, research funding, and research governance include: enabling more diverse, transdisciplinary research; supporting the international exchange of expertise; enabling continuous science-policy conversations; conducting research to generate insights on potential interlinkages in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.