Geoengineering, Scientific Community, and Policymakers

Besides mitigation and adaptation, geoengineering has been emergingas a new approach to deal with the challenges posed by anthropogenic climate change.However, the various definitions and designations for the concept and its clusters, aswell as their unclear boundaries with the concepts of mitigation and adaptation, distortand invalidate the existence of a valuable debate in both academic and public contexts.Identifying the current overlaps, and making a comparative analysis with two previousproposals for the categorization of responses to anthropogenic climate change, thisarticle presents a new categorization proposal directed to promote the essentialrapprochement between the scientific community and policymakers. This proposal removesthe term geoengineering, pointing out the advantages of a debate specifically orientedtoward each method in particular. It is also explained how each category should beenvisaged, rethinking the importance of international cooperation and stressing thedecisive impact that public awareness could play in dealing with thischallenge