Governing cloud seeding in Australia and the United States : lessons for regional solar radiation management

This thesis investigates the extent to which cloud seeding laws can be used as a basis for governing regional solar radiation management activities. Solar radiation management (SRM) is being proposed to reflect a portion of sunlight away from Earth, to delay temperature increases while the international community accelerates mitigation actions. It includes planetary-scale interventions, as well as regionalscale activities, such as marine cloud brightening (MCB). Research and deployment of these novel technologies will require the development of governance frameworks to manage associated risks and uncertainties. Whereas attempts to influence the climate system at a global scale will require international governance, domestic arrangements may be more appropriate to govern small-scale field testing and regional SRM applications. Cloud seeding is an established technology, developed after World War II to modify precipitation patterns to enhance rain and snow, or suppress hail. In the context of climate change, cloud seeding continues to be used as a long-term water management strategy to increase freshwater resources in key locations for water, food, and energy security. Governments across the world have long invested in these technologies and developed legal frameworks to govern cloud seeding activities. Cloud seeding and regional SRM bear enough similarities to warrant an in-depth assessment of existing legal and institutional arrangements for cloud seeding, and the extent to which they can inform the governance of SRM technologies, such as MCB. This thesis assesses the relevance of a legal analogy between cloud seeding and regional SRM through the analytical and normative lens of adaptive governance. Using adaptive governance principles, it examines the governance of cloud seeding in two Australian states and two American states. These case studies show that regional SRM regimes require (1) legal arrangements to facilitate greater interactions between institutions across scales of governance, to account both for the scale of deployment and the scale of impacts; (2) broader participation of relevant stakeholders at an early stage of research; (3) flexible legal mechanisms built into the decision-making to foster iterative learning; and (4) mechanisms to prevent and resolve potential conflicts.