As climate change’s risks have grown and limits to primary responses become evident, solar geoengineering (or solar radiation modification) has risen in prominence as a potential complementary response. Widespread calls for expanded research have raised objections, based on anticipated links to potential future deployment and potentially harmful interactions with other climate responses. The unique concerns raised by solar geoengineering may warrant governing associated research with more care or scrutiny than other areas, but states have not engaged the issue. Given this, we analyze the potential for nonstate actors to provide governance functions needed to enable, control, and legitimate near-term, small-scale solar geoengineering research. Drawing on the theory of regulatory processes and nonstate actors as well as evidence from other issue areas, we describe six types of nonstate actors in terms of their capacity, knowledge, and interests relevant to governing solar geoengineering research: researchers themselves, the universities or other institutions that employ them, funders, academic publishers, professional societies, and advocacy nongovernmental organizations. We conclude that suitably configured collaborations among these actors can meet the additional governance needs of near-term solar geoengineering research. We consider potential limitations to nonstate governance related to legitimacy, effectiveness, and capture, and conclude that these are not severe under present conditions, but could become stronger if research grows toward deployment. Nonstate governance may even be preferable to state regulation of small-scale scientific activities, offering more flexible early exploration of options with the possibility of later transition into more state-led and legalized governance arrangements.

中文翻译：

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太阳能地球工程研究的非国家治理

随着气候变化风险的增加和主要响应的限制变得明显，太阳能地球工程（或太阳辐射改造）作为一种潜在的补充响应已经变得越来越突出。基于与未来潜在部署的预期联系以及与其他气候响应的潜在有害相互作用，对扩大研究的广泛呼吁提出了反对意见。太阳能地球工程引发的独特担忧可能需要比其他领域更加谨慎或审查地管理相关研究，但各州尚未参与该问题。鉴于此，我们分析了非国家行为者提供启用、控制和合法近期小规模太阳能地球工程研究所需的治理功能的潜力。借鉴监管过程和非国家行为者的理论以及来自其他问题领域的证据，我们根据与管理太阳能地球工程研究相关的能力、知识和兴趣描述了六类非国家行为者：研究人员本身、大学或其他雇用他们的机构、资助者、学术出版商、专业协会和倡导性非政府组织。我们得出的结论是，这些参与者之间适当配置的合作可以满足近期太阳能地球工程研究的额外治理需求。我们考虑了与合法性、有效性和捕获相关的非国家治理的潜在限制，并得出结论，这些限制在当前条件下并不严重，但如果研究朝着部署方向发展，可能会变得更强大。