Integrating Environmental Ethics & Religious Perspectives into CDR Assessment

This session was organised by the Earth System Governance Working Group on Carbon Removal as part of the 2024 Forum on 'Re-imagining Earth System Governance in an Era of Polycrisis'.

https://2024forum.earthsystemgovernan...

As global systems of knowledge and practice, world religious and spiritual traditions provide frameworks that societies have historically drawn upon to understand moral and ethical questions related to humanity’s role in and responsibility towards nature. Furthermore, religious beliefs and practices can be influential in how we approach cultural issues and social organization. Therefore, it can be argued that religion has a role to play alongside other forms of knowing in any environmental discussion.

At this round table, we discuss how insights from religious perspectives may build upon or contrast with existing environmental ethics categories/criteria being developed to assess the ‘feasibility & desirability’ of CDR. We bring together insights from our ongoing work on integrating societally relevant, ethically informed ‘desirability’ criteria into the holistic assessment of marine CDR proposals, with religious perspectives. We are interested in how religious questions and narratives about natural spaces differ from those currently used in environmental ethics’ discussions of CDR, and how those alternative perspectives could shape understanding, assessment and governance of (marine) carbon removal.

Concretely, we discuss the following questions:
1. (Why) Is it important that religious/spiritual perspectives are brought into CDR assessment debates?
2. What are some of the novel questions/narratives that various religious/ spiritual traditions/perspectives could bring to the conversation?
3. What are some concrete ways in which religious/spiritual knowledge (holders) can contribute to ongoing CDR assessment and policy processes?
4. What are specific challenges that might be encountered in dialogues between religious, scientific, and policy communities?

Speakers:
Miranda Boettcher, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)
Sarah Fredricks, University of Chicago
Clare Heyward, The Arctic University of Norway
Willis Jenkins, University of Virginia
Lukas Tank, University of Kiel
Lieske Voget-Kleschin, University of Kiel