Public Engagement and the Global South in Solar Radiation Management: Rethinking Expertise and Representation

As Solar Radiation Management (SRM) becomes an increasingly visible topic in climate research and policy debates, terms such as the Global South and public participation are frequently invoked. However, these concepts are often mobilized in instrumental or rhetorical ways, without sufficient attention to the epistemological assumptions and implications they carry. Drawing from Science and Technology Studies (STS), this paper critically examines how SRM literature frames these categories, emphasizing how discursive practices shape who is included, what counts as expertise, and how legitimacy is constructed.

A discourse analysis of key scientific and policy documents reveals persistent simplifications. Public participation is commonly framed as a means to increase social acceptance, rather than as a space of deliberation or epistemic negotiation. For example, documents often claim that “public engagement can help build trust in geoengineering,” a formulation that positions participation as an instrument of legitimacy, rather than as a process of shared inquiry and contestation. These framings echo widespread tendencies in SRM literature to treat public engagement as a mechanism for enhancing trust or acceptance (Royal Society, 2009; NAS, 2021), rather than as a deliberative space for exploring conflicting values and knowledges (Macnaghten & Szerszynski, 2013; Bellamy et al., 2013). Similarly, the Global South is frequently described in terms of vulnerability and potential benefit from future interventions. One report suggests that “low-income countries are particularly vulnerable and may benefit from regional deployment,” thus framing the South as a passive object of intervention, not as a heterogeneous set of knowledge actors and political agents.

To address these epistemological reductions, we draw on Latour’s (1987) notion of “centers of calculation” and Collins’s (2007) typology of expertise to advocate for more responsible, situated, and dialogically engaged forms of expertise. It argues for an epistemologically reflexive approach to SRM governance, one that treats participation as an active and ongoing negotiation of values, knowledges, and responsibilities in planetary interventions.