The science-policy interface of soil-based carbon dioxide removal

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is seen both as essential climate action and a distraction from reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Several CDR technologies use soils, which are connected to multiple ‘wicked problems’ (food and water security, pollution). The transfer of carbon from atmosphere to soils is highly challenging to quantify. Accounting methodologies affect how actions are recognised as climate change mitigation, monitoring requirements, and whose emissions are offset. This project investigates the role of accounting in governing soil-based CDR.

Background

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are receiving increasing attention as the global warming level nears the 1.5 °C threshold. However, these technologies face several challenges of scaling up from small scale to globally significant interventions, in dealing with large uncertainties and bioethical dilemmas, and securing public acceptance. A branch of these technologies deal with the storage of carbon in soils. Soils are already intensely utilised as a resource, which CDR interventions could cause co-benefits and/or trade-offs to. High heterogeneity in soils also adds uncertainty around determining carbon removed from the atmosphere. The aim of this project is to understand how science and policy around soil-based CDR technologies interact with each other, and how structures and assumptions embedded in the initial phases of scientific development and establishment may determine political outcomes. As carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂-eq) is the metric of climate change mitigation, how CDR interventions are assigned a value through scientific quantification can become contested.

Project description

This project focuses on the process of accounting for CDR intervention as a key site of science-policy interface. Accounting methodologies and their transformation in usage through time, their embedding in digital tools, and the networks of expertise involved in their development, legitimisation, and proliferation will be explored through process tracing, comparative case studies, network analysis, and narrative analysis.

Results

Expected results will be to highlight social influences on the act of accounting for CDR.