Take: Season 3 Episode 9: Iron Fertilization Governance with Sara Nawaz
Take on a podcast episode from Ocean Solutions: a NOISE Lab podcast, originally published Wed, 30 Se. Listen: https://soundcloud.com/morgan-reed-raven/season-3-episode-9-iron TL;DR ExOIS (Woods Hole) is targeting the Northeast Pacific for ocean iron fertilization field trials and still fundraising; Nawaz pushed them to stand up a governance advisory board. “Nutrient robbing” is the distinguishing risk: iron added in one basin can suppress productivity decades later off, say, Peru. Useful framing for permanence-adjacent liability. Workshop finding: publics liked macroalgae sinking until shown it at scale, then preferred offshore direct air capture with sub-seabed mineralization. First time I’ve seen this “betrayal effect” named. The 2012 Haida/Russ George dump became a geoengineering scandal because of the carbon-credit financing, not the iron. Nawaz says it froze German ocean alkalinity funding for ~15 years. Baseline public knowledge of marine CDR in BC/Washington: effectively zero. Cautious interest, not opposition. Ocean Solutions (NOISE Lab / UC Santa Barbara Bren School) closes season three with hosts Lina and Alex interviewing Sara Nawaz, research director at American University’s Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal. The hour covers how she runs deliberative workshops on marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) in the Pacific Northwest, her advisory work on the Exploring Ocean Iron Solutions (ExOIS) programme, and why iron fertilization carries governance baggage no other ocean pathway does. Episode here. ...