Knowing your stakeholders is key to responsible carbon dioxide removal governance
The development of new carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies is gathering pace around the world. Stakeholder engagement around these complex technologies is crucial. Given the opportunities and challenges related to their deployment, it’s also important to understand and anticipate their social impacts.
Including stakeholders in the development and governance of emerging technologies is a methodology for responsible innovation.
However, identifying key CDR stakeholders, their relationships, and the best way to involve them is not straightforward.
In our new paper, we discuss the complexities and challenges of managing diverse interests in CDR governance.
We provide three takeaways for how to navigate the diversity and engagement of stakeholders around CDR.
Stakeholders can be broadly identified as either niche, regime or landscape actors
Niche actors
Niche actors are innovators who focus on the early-stage development of CDR, such as start-ups and research institutions.
Regime actors
Regime actors can include governments, local communities, business and industry. They are characterised by a preference for continuing existing practices and systems rather than accommodating radical changes.
Landscape actors
Landscape actors can include governments, local communities, business and industry. They are characterised by a preference for continuing existing practices and systems rather than accommodating radical changes.
The relationships between these groups are important
The relationships between these groups can help us better understand challenges and opportunities associated with CDR deployment.
To effectively engage with stakeholders, we can further classify niche, regime and landscape actors by their type of relationship with each other.
We recommend using a four-quadrant matrix to map these relationships, based on whether they are compatible and necessary (see below).
In compatible and necessary relationships, stakeholders have similar worldviews and are bound by formal agreements, such as start-ups and venture capital firms. Compatible and contingent relationships are based on common ideas but lack formal agreements, e.g., environmental policymakers and conservation advocacy groups.
Stakeholders with incompatible and necessary relationships have differing perspectives and worldviews but are interested in maintaining the relationship. Such relationships may exist between industry and local communities, where both parties rely on each other for positive economic outcomes but otherwise have different interests and worldviews.
The weakest relationship is incompatible and contingent, where stakeholders have contradictory worldviews and aim to discredit each other, such as industry and climate activists.
Cooperation between stakeholders is the main goal
To effectively engage stakeholders, we suggest identifying key players across the three groups, understanding their views, and developing targeted strategies to encourage cooperation and resolve conflicts.
The goal is to create a system that fosters dialogue among stakeholders with varying interests and helps achieve a common goal. For example, stakeholders that perceive CDR deployment as a form of mitigation deterrence or “greenwashing” are at odds with scientists who believe that CDR could have an important role in reaching net zero emissions. This incompatible and contingent relationship can shift to a more productive one if appropriate communication is used to alleviate uncertainty around social and environmental impacts.
Each CDR approach can be perceived differently by different stakeholders depending on their location, values and beliefs. Therefore, place-based approaches can be helpful in navigating social and environmental consequences rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
How to use this approach
Our paper provides insights into the complexities of managing CDR efforts and offers a practical approach to handling the diverse interests of different groups. Early and deliberate engagement between stakeholder groups can go a long way to shift antagonistic relationships. This can help ensure new CDR technologies are developed responsibly for the benefit of all Australians.
The authors wish to add that the findings of this paper related to challenges presented by diverse stakeholders are not unique to CDR. The proposed framework could potentially also be used to navigate stakeholder heterogeneity for other emerging climate and energy technologies.
More information
Malakar, Y., Brent, K., Bester, A. et al. Navigating stakeholder heterogeneity in carbon dioxide removal governance. Nat. Rev. Clean Technol. 1, 95–105 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44359-024-00006-0