Community perspectives on marine carbon dioxide removal and ocean alkalinity enhancement: A future scenario approach

Minimal empirical work to date explores community perceptions of ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), an approach to carbon dioxide removal that is beginning to see initial field trials. Here, we explore community perceptions of OAE at a location of particular interest for ongoing and future OAE research and deployment: the Olympic Peninsula, a region in the Pacific Northwest of the US. Drawing on two workshops that make use of a future scenario approach with 38 community members, we find that views on OAE extended well beyond ecological impacts—instead orienting to specific political economic arrangements and multiple dimensions of environmental justice. Specifically, participants expressed a preference for configurations of OAE that involve the use of existing infrastructure and minimal ‘industrialization’ of coastlines, integration of established sectors and materials via ‘coupled’ models, and community or Tribal ownership models. Participants also emphasized the importance to them of different OAE configurations' possible distributions of social benefits and burdens. Preferences were not, however, fixed or immutable: participants expressed tensions in thinking in regard to issues of climate urgency and possible deployment scales and locations. These reflections—a result of the scenario method we employed—highlight the importance of engagement approaches that encourage participants to contemplate the diverse contexts and systems in which OAE might be deployed.