Marine climate engineering: current regulatory efforts under the London Protocol - Marine climate engineering techniques have the potential to mitigate climate change, but pose multiple risks to the marine environment and therefore require international governance. In 2013, the Parties to the London Protocol adopted the 2013 Amendment to their treaty, which includes a smart and far-sighted regulatory approach to the governance of climate engineering techniques. The regulation achieves two main objectives. Firstly, due to gaps in knowledge, only scientific field trials will be carried out, but the commercial deployment of the techniques is prohibited. Secondly, negative environmental impacts of the field trials on the marine environment are to be avoided as far as possible. Overall, the aim is to ensure that political decisions on the use of such technologies are based on a solid scientific foundation and not just on conjecture. Since 2022, the contracting parties have been negotiating how new marine climate engineering techniques envisaged by the scientific community can and should be regulated.
