RRI Tools

Parkhill, K., and Pidgeon, N. (2011), Public Engagement on Geoengineering Research: Preliminary Report on the SPICE Deliberative Workshops, Understanding Risk Working Paper 11-01, Cardiff School of Psychology

The SPICE public deliberative workshops aimed to explore perceptions of generic geoengineering proposals, stratospheric aerosols and in particular the SPICE 1 km test-bed (hereafter ‘test-bed’) through completing the following four objectives:

1. To give an overview of the likely varied and nuanced perspectives of the members of the general public and report to the EPSRC Societal Issues Panel (SIP).
2. To provide one piece of evidence that SIP might deem useful when completing their stage gate evaluation.
3. To explore, without guarding against future public or media contestation regarding either the development of geoengineering techniques (individual and holistically) or specific investment into research of the SPICE techniques, possible public concerns, questions, and conditions regarding SPICE and geoengineering more generically which may ignite said controversies.
4. To map the range of perspectives and framings each participant themselves brings to bear on geoengineering in general, and as part of this to the stratospheric aerosols and the SPICE Assembly development in particular, when this is introduced to them in a structured way.