How to speak about climate cooling? co-creating a climate engineering engagement toolkit in the Arctic and the UK Section: Who decides? (Governance and ethics)

Long-term public engagement remains a missing puzzle piece in climate engineering
research. So far, public engagement on climate engineering has mostly focused on scoping
people’s opinions about possible research or deployment, valuable snapshots of public
sentiment, but leaving two glaring gaps. First, existing studies rarely explore how participants
form, refine, or change their views when confronted with new information or differing
perspectives on climate engineering. Second, many efforts have overlooked key climate actors:
environmental and social justice advocates, Indigenous communities, and other engaged
citizens. Our project tackles these omissions by introducing a dual-stream model of co-creation.
We convene workshops in Arctic communities, collaborating with local organisations to centre
Indigenous ways of knowing alongside scientific insights. Simultaneously, we host three small
multi-years citizen assemblies in the UK to trace how individuals grapple with emerging ideas,
confront personal assumptions, and adapt to new knowledge over time. By using Q-sort
surveys, reflective journals, and iterative discussions, we capture how trust, scepticism, and
understanding evolve, and why. We focus on the journey of engagement rather than static
opinion, revealing how conversations can shift societal attitudes toward climate intervention.
Ultimately, our project will produce an inclusive, evidence-based toolkit that offers a practical
blueprint for more transparent and bottom-up engagement in climate engineering research.