Escalating climate impacts are reflected in increased research and development efforts focused on the delivery of novel climate interventions. These include negative emissions technologies, solar radiation management (SRM), and assisted ecosystem adaptation – that is, the deliberate acceleration of evolutionary responses to climate pressure through techniques such as assisted species migration, selective breeding and enhanced ecosystem restoration.

Australia’s own Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP) aims to provide marine managers a suite of socially, economically and technically viable options for intervening at scale on the Great Barrier Reef. This aims to protect reefs from climate extremes, improve recovery from disturbance, and accelerate adaptation to heat stress.

Criticism of RRAP by social and ecological scientists addresses: (1) the complexity of global environmental change; (2) the temporally unbound character of intervention and its potentially unforeseeable consequences; (3) the challenge of developing effective governance regimes for the implementation of adaptation interventions; (4) the ethics of intervention in ecosystems which have been managed in order to conserve ‘natural’ values; and (5) the moral risk that intervention to support ecosystem adaptation will be used to justify inattention to the root causes of environmental change. This presentation argues, however, that many of the criticisms levelled at assisted ecosystem adaptation in coral reefs are characterised by singular voices, polemic arguments, empirical short-cuts, and premature closure.

To make this argument Professor Lockie will evaluate and contest criticisms of assisted reef adaptation. The intent, however, is not to have the last word but to instead encourage curiosity among social scientists toward the development, evaluation, and implementation of climate intervention technologies and practices. The seminar will also propose a framework for critical engagement that – drawing on the concepts of ‘matters of concern’ and ‘matters of care’ – shifts attention from arbitrating over the facts of intervention to facilitating more inclusive, foresightful, and constructive dialogue over climate intervention knowledge, goals, and ethics.

Stewart Lockie is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Cairns Institute at James Cook University. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the School of Sociology at ANU and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Professor Lockie is an environmental sociologist whose research addresses climate change, biodiversity conservation, agriculture, and resource development. He shares leadership of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program’s Stakeholder and Traditional Owner Engagement Subprogram, served as the Foundation Chair of the Cairns Port Douglas Reef Hub, and helped establish the Wet Tropics Restoration Alliance. Additionally, Professor Lockie is the Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Sociology and the author of Failure or Reform? Market-Based Policy Instruments for Sustainable Agriculture and Resource Management, published in 2020 by Routledge, London.