The International Politics of Carbon Dioxide Removal: Pathways to Cooperative Global Governance

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios that limit warming to 1.5°C require that, in addition to unprecedented reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, between 100 and 1,000 metric gigatons of CO2 be removed from the atmosphere before 2100. Despite this, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is not yet firmly on national or global policy agendas. Owing to uncertainty about both technical potential and social license, it is unclear whether CDR on the required scale will even be feasible. This article asks what scholarship about the provision of global public goods can tell us about governing CDR. We identify four areas where new international cooperative efforts—likely performed by small clubs of motivated actors—could amplify existing CDR policy responses: development of CDR accounting and reporting methodologies, technological and prototype deployment for technically challenging CDR, development of incentives for CDR deployment, and work on governance and accountability mechanisms that respond to social justice impacts and social license concerns.