6 May 2021

New publication from SUSY: Geoengineering: A New Arena of International Politics

Geoengineering

Associate Professor Olaf Corry is co-author on a new publication in the form of a chapter about international politics and geoengineering in a new textbook called International Relations in the Anthropocene together with Nikolaj Kornbech.

The chapter introduces geoengineering as a new arena of international politics and explains why hopeful technical explorations of alternative climate strategies have not properly factored in the international. It asks how international politics might affect potential development and deployment of geoengineering techniques, and conversely how their emergence could change the international system itself, introducing new dilemmas and modes of interaction characteristic of the Anthropocene.

The chapter addresses three key questions: First, what are geoengineering technologies? Second, why has the international not been factored in properly? Third, how might global climate intervention interact with the international? It concludes with a consideration of what ‘the international’ implies for theorising International Relations in the ‘Anthropocene’ more widely.

The textbook introduces advanced students of International Relations (and beyond) to the ways in which the advent of, and reflections on, the Anthropocene impact on the study of global politics and the disciplinary foundations of International Relations. The book details, respectively, why the Anthropocene is of importance to International Relations, challenges to traditional approaches to security, the question of governance and agency in the Anthropocene, and new methods and approaches, going beyond the human/nature divide.

Read the chapter.

Get access to the textbook.