Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR): What is Sustainable and Just?

By Duncan McLaren and Olaf Corry

As atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations continue to rise apace and global temperatures and climate impacts accelerate due to insufficient global action, many are placing hopes and expectations in large scale anthropogenic ‘carbon dioxide removal’ (CDR) to balance the global carbon budget. 

CDR comprises a range of ideas and schemes that aim to draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide (which is already at harmful levels) and store it safely. In pursuing a maximum of a 1.5°C temperature rise at 2100, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) Reports include many potentially unsustainable scenarios with removal of between 6 and 11 billion tonnes of CO2 (6-11 Gt-CO2) every year for 50 years.  This would be a staggering amount of removal and storage and raises a host of challenging questions not only about feasibility and effectiveness, but also about safety, sustainability, legality, justice, ethics and geo-politics. 

Questions include:

- Are such rates of removal even possible in the face of technical, economic and social limits?

- Whose continued emissions would be counterbalanced with CDR? 

- What would a world of large-scale CDR look like in terms of human rights, sustainability and geopolitical risks?

- What do such calculations assume about continual economic growth and global inequalities? 

- Can CDR be pursued without deterring urgently needed acceleration of emissions cuts? 

This briefing paper offers some answers to these questions, highlighting uncertainties surrounding prospects for CDR, and social, environmental and human rights harms that may arise if we place too much trust in CDR – especially if CDR is treated as interchangeable with emissions reductions. We outline a pathway that restrains climate change and avoids unsafe, unjust and unsustainable technofixes.

The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva published a 'Climate Change: What We Can Do" (previously known as ‘How to be a Hero for All Our Children’) which is available in English, Arabic, Spanish. and French. It aims to connect people with the most recent climate science and suggests personal actions and questions for politicians.

‘What We Can Do’ has been updated with the most recent climate scientific findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report (AR6). This report was compiled over seven years and involved hundreds of scientists worldwide.  

'What We Can Do’ is written for a wide audience, whether already active or new to climate concerns. It includes categories such as “What we eat”, “How we grow and sell food”, and “How we use and source energy.” This publication is meant to aid in our collective empowerment to transform the root causes driving planetary crisis. 

This publication is accessible online and via a print-at-home version which can be used for personal distribution and campaigning.

QUNO’s Human Impact of Climate Change programme, speaking on behalf of the Friends World Committee for Consultation, participated in the 60th Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Istanbul, Turkey. 

At this session, the panel was tasked with crucial decisions on IPCC’s finances and its work for the 7th Assessment Cycle. QUNO submitted three interventions: advocating for the need to focus on the transformation of root causes rather than feeding unhealthy reliance on fossil fuels through research on geo-engineering; for research that upholds the rights and knowledge of Indigenous peoples; and the inclusion of military emissions in IPCC modeling and greenhouse gas emissions reporting. 

QUNO’s specific interventions and a debrief analysis on the negotiations and results of the 60th Session are available for download.

QUNO, on behalf of the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), offered this submission in response to a call for input the Article 6.4 Supervisory Board on how to meaningfully engage with Indigenous peoples and local communities. This submission calls for the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body to ground meangingful engagement with Indigenous peoples and local communities in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 Summary findings, approved by States in 2021, 2022, and 2023.

The Article 6.4 Supervisory Body is tasked with supervising and operationalizing the carbon crediting mechanism that was established by Article 6.4 of the UN Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change which encourages global action to help humanity and nature avert catastrophic temperature rise due to human activities. 

FWCC is an accredited observer of both the UNFCCC and IPCC, as well as an expert reviewer of IPCC Reports. In addition to FWCC expertise, the submission collated findings directly referenced from the IPCC AR6 Reports. We hope that this collation will help guide the Supervisory Board to ground its work in the best available scientific research, strengthening efforts to establish meaningful engagement with Indigenous Peoples and local communities. This is critical to avert exacerbating existing structural inequities, especially when considering land-based carbon credits in areas of Indigenous land tenure or where land tenure is insecure. This submission highlights IPCC findings that not only emphasize the risks associated with failing to engage meaningfully with Indigenous Peoples and local communities but also offer approaches to minimize such risks through monitoring and reporting; capacity-building; or incorporating Indigenous knowledges and human rights-based approaches

QUNO has just published the most recent version of A Government Official’s Toolkit: Inspiring Urgent, Real, and Equitable climate action. The 2023 Toolkit highlights the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report. It is a useful guide for both policy makers and climate activists.

It presents 19 categories referencing the latest scientific findings of the IPCC, focused on “What is happening, Why, and the urgent, feasible, and equitable near-term options that are already available at scale to address climate change and improve human well-being and planetary health.”  The IPCC’s message is clear: “climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health.”

This update is written to support government officials – at local, regional, and national levels – who are concerned about the impacts of climate change on their citizens, country, and the planet. It offers concise excerpts to help readers engage with different concerns through a science based perspective to improve urgent, real, feasible near term actions.

Included in the 19 covered topics are: “The Root Causes;” “The Consequences of Our Human Activities – Hurting People and the Planet;” “Urgent Action to Keep Global Warming to a Safer Temperature Rise Limit;” “Averting Suffering, Death, Loss and Damage,” “Climate Action that is Real, Transformative, Feasible, and Available at Scale,” and “Empowering People in an Era of Climate Change.”

Last November, States that took part in COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh agreed to pass a new funding arrangement for responding to loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change. Loss and damage (L&D) refers to the monetary and non-monetary losses and damages that people have experienced and will experience due to sudden and slow-onset events. Economic, or tangible, L&D includes the loss of property and livelihood, changes in labor and agricultural productivity, cost of medical treatments associated with climatic events, and so forth. Non-economic, or intangible, L&D includes but is not limited to the mental health impacts, loss of ecosystems, and loss of culture (places, artifacts, language, etc.) from climate change.

People who are most affected by and vulnerable to further L&D have contributed the least to the climate crisis. Therefore, is it morally right that those who are most responsible for the climate crisis should finance the new funding arrangement for L&D. Taking up the need to address L&D in an ethical manner, the Human Impacts of Climate Change programme published this month a new briefing paper on “Fair Sources of Finance for a New Loss and Damage Funding Arrangement.” The options offered in the paper are meant to present policy makers with feasible and fair sources of finance for funding the new L&D arrangement without taking money away from needed action into climate change mitigation and adaptation. Grounded in principles like polluter pays, historic responsibility, and needs based, the options center redressing fossil fuel harm, exploring existing financial instruments, and supporting a more just and equitable world. 

The Global Stocktake (GST) is used to monitor the implementation and evaluate the collective progress made in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. The FWCC has signed a joint submission on views on the approach to the consideration of output components of the GST. Read the submission to learn about the human rights outcomes that civil society organizations are calling for.

The impacts of climate change are shaping some of the oldest human practices: moving and creating places where we feel safe and at home. This 2-sider focuses on climate-induced movement, and the specific international laws that protect people who may need to move due to climate change.

Quakers support Indigenous peoples’ rights, based on our commitment to peace and justice. We recognise the historical and ongoing injustice faced by Indigenous peoples and the direct role historically played by Quakers in the genocide of Indigenous peoples. Today, Quaker support for Indigenous peoples in their struggles for justice has taken form at both the community, national and international level, including long-standing support to establish the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Over the years, QUNO has backed efforts to secure and strengthen the rights of Indigenous peoples, predominantly through supporting the work of the Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC). In the context of the climate negotiations, QUNO’s Human Impacts of Climate Change programme advocates for human rights-based, urgent and ambitious climate action and raises up the voices of those most marginalized and vulnerable. We have been observers to the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform since its first meeting in 2018.