Simulating a Climate Engineering Crisis

Background. At the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees, climate activists and researchers began to look for alternative measures. Climate engineering (CE) - the deliberate manipulation of the planetary environment to decelerate climate change - emerges as a possibly effective, albeit risky and conflictual, option. Aim. This article aims both at simulating a plausible international scenario of negotiation over solar climate engineering deployment, and at utilizing the rules of Model United Nations (MUN) for collaborative learning in a university class. Furthermore, the article intends to provide a framework for simulations about CE that could easily be reproduced. Method. MUN is an established and well-tested foundation for a simulation with students, including preparation leading up to the simulation and feedback rounds afterwards. We repeated the simulation three times, recorded the sessions as well as the debriefings , and gathered interesting insight by comparing the results. Result. For our CE simulations, we discovered: 1. Divergent interests (e.g. global north vs global south). 2. Power struggle (e.g. role of the veto powers). 3. Scientific and political ignorance (e.g. decision-making under uncertainty). 4. Risk politics (e.g. trade-offs between climate change risks vs. CE risks). Conclusion. MUN qualifies well for simulating a CE crisis. However, known lacks in MUN settings (like underrepresentation of non-state actors) must be discussed during the debriefing. These simulations illustrate possible future conflicts over CE without being prescriptive in any way.