Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative — General Support (2017)

[Global Catastrophic Risks] Grant investigator: Claire Zabel This page was reviewed but not written by the grant investigator. SRMGI staff also reviewed this page prior to publication. The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $2,000,000 to the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative (SRMGI) via the Environmental Defense Fund for general support. The funding is intended to help support SRMGI's on-going governance work related to solar radiation management (SRM), and will additionally help support a new research fund for modeling the impacts of SRM across the developing world, called the Developing Country Impacts Modeling Analysis for SRM (DECIMALS). This is the second grant we have recommended to SRMGI, and our July 2015 grant page includes more information on our case for the funding as well our perceived risks and reservations, which remain largely unchanged. In short, our impression is that there is globally very little work focused on improving the governance of potential SRM implementation, and we therefore consider funding SRMGI as an opportunity to build a sparse field. Additionally, we are inclined to agree with SRMGI’s case that it is important to increase the engagement of experts in the developing world with SRM governance issues. This grant falls within our work on mitigating global catastrophic risks.