Matthias Honegger is an external PhD candidate. His research is focusing on the emerging discourse of climate engineering in the context of global risk governance of climate change, exploring tensions between goal-driven governance such as through the sustainable development goals, the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement and their implications on policy decisions concerning carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management. His thesis explores potential policy instruments, value judgments, and assumptions of climate change negotiators, climate modellers and NGO representatives.

 

He has a background as a consultant and researcher on international climate policy under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and currently works as a Senior Research Associate at Perspectives Climate Research. His research seeks to better understand emerging views and positions on this controversial set of technologies through an analysis of the discourse among stakeholders in international climate and other global environmental governance. He also seeks to explore how the Sustainable Development Goals could serve as a framework for the analysis of climate engineering implications.

 

In the area of international climate policy, Matthias Honegger has nine years of work experience. He has contributed to drafting mitigation policies, national mitigation targets, studies on market mechanisms and advised government and private sector delegations during UN climate negotiations on a broad range of negotiations topics. Previous clients include the World Bank, UNDP, UNEP, various governments, private sector companies and development cooperation agencies such as GIZ, AfD, and SNV. He has been authoring and co-authoring studies and reports on carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management since 2012.

He holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. His master thesis explored long-term trends relevant to the governance of climate engineering with a multi-disciplinary perspective. He has visited Oxford University, Harvard University, Yale University and the University of Heidelberg for short, intensive courses and summer-schools, on various topics of international governance. Before that, he has received a BSc in Environmental Sciences from ETH Zurich with a focus on aquatic systems. During his studies, he also spent a semester at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway.