Chapter 3 elaborates on the linkages between technology and international institutions. It also introduces the guiding questions at the core of the book: how do international institutions respond to the promises and perils associated with transformative novel technologies? When do international institutions respond, when do they not respond, and why do their responses differ? Finally, how could institutional responses be designed in order to better facilitate the realization of technological promise and the avoidance of perils? The chapter contextualizes these questions within broader theoretical discussions in international regime theory and cooperation theory. A key point is that international institutions play a limited, albeit indispensable role in the regulation of transformative novel technologies. International institutions are no substitute for regulation at other scales, including at national levels, but are vital for managing the various transboundary aspects of transformative novel technologies.

Chapter 2 discusses the linkages between technology and environmental sustainability. It starts out with some brief context on key concepts in the contemporary debate: transitions, transformations, and resilience. The chapter continues with two concepts that are central for this book: the idea of the ‘techno-fix’, in the sense of technology potentially providing partial solutions for intractable social- and political problems; and the notion of lock-in, where past technological choices may be difficult to revise or reverse in the present. Further, it develops the notion of technological ‘promises’ and ‘perils’ as key elements of my theoretical framework: transformative novel technologies could produce substantial benefits but also give rise to various types of harm, providing a rationale for governance responses that capture the former and avoid the latter. At the same time, transformative novel technologies tend to be ambiguous as the precise extent to which they entail different types of promises and perils is usually unknown, uncertain or disputed.

Chapter 6 turns to the potential extraction of metals from areas beyond national jurisdiction: Antarctica, the deep seas and outer space. Each of these areas contains, with varying degrees of plausibility, large reserves of metals that are indispensable for a global transition towards sustainability, particularly in the energy and transportation sectors. At the same time, extractive operations would be virtually certain to generate various types of adverse environmental impacts while also raising challenging questions related to fairness and equity: in different ways, the legal regimes applicable to each of these three areas beyond national jurisdiction give effect to collective rights that are most clearly enshrined in the concept of the common heritage of humanity. The chapter assesses institutional responses to this technological field under three international institutions: the Antarctic Treaty System, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the Outer Space Treaty.

Chapter 7 assesses the overall findings of the book and provides outlooks and perspectives. The responses of international institutions to transformative novel technologies are mostly deficient in that they do not meaningfully contribute either to the realization of associated technological promises or to the avoidance of perils. Exceptions do exist, however, particularly where transformative novel technologies have a strong normative fit with pre-existing regulatory frameworks and can thus be assimilated by them with relative ease. The chapter also offers broader reflections on how to improve institutional responses to transformative novel technologies and then goes on to elaborate on some conceptual issues that have emerged in the previous discussion: from technology and path dependence to the role of the precautionary principle to the potential problem of ‘slippery slope’ effects in research and development. The chapter then tentatively discusses how the theoretical framework of this book would apply beyond the environmental domain. I conclude with some final considerations on the notion of ‘techno-fixes’ in the global politics of environmental sustainability.

Chapter 5 addresses the potential use of climate engineering technologies as a way of counteracting anthropogenic global warming. These technologies encompass methods for the permanent removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide, for instance via its direct capture from ambient air and subsequent geological storage. They also include more controversial technologies that would modify the planetary albedo in order to reflect a small fraction of incoming sunlight back into space in order to induce an artificial cooling effect. These two sets of technologies play out against the background of the increasingly dim prospects of achieving international temperature targets in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement. The chapter traces institutional responses to both negative emissions technologies and solar geoengineering across a multitude of international forums, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the London Convention on the Dumping of Waste at Sea, and the Paris Agreement itself.

Chapter 1 introduces the concept of transformative novel technologies in the context of the contemporary global environmental crisis. It discusses how technology is central to the crisis as well as its potential resolution, although its status is frequently ambiguous and contested. The chapter makes the case that governance solutions, including at the international level, are indispensable in order to capitalize on the potential benefits of transformative novel technologies, to avoid their various potential downsides, or both. The empirical case studies of the book are then previewed: biotechnology, specifically novel methods for large-scale biological control as well as the utilization of digital sequence information in research, development and innovation; climate engineering, a series of proposed methods for large-scale intervention into the climate system; and mining beyond national jurisdictions, where various technological developments increasingly enable the extraction of metals critical to a global sustainability transition from areas that were previously inaccessible.

Chapter 4 addresses the broader field of biotechnology, where two recent technological developments are highly consequential for the global politics of environmental sustainability. The first is the trend towards the utilization of digitalized genetic sequence data via big data methods. This offers novel prospects for biodiversity conservation but also threatens to undermine long-standing international commitments towards the fair and equitable sharing of benefits associated with the physical genetic material corresponding to these sequence data. The second development is novel methods for large-scale genetic manipulation of wild species, offering significant potential for conservation but at the price of unprecedented biosafety challenges. The chapter investigates the responses to these technological developments under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, as well as the World Health Organization.

Emerging technologies potentially have far-reaching impacts on the conservation, as well as the sustainable and equitable use, of biodiversity. Simultaneously, biodiversity itself increasingly serves as an input or source material for novel technological applications. In this chapter, we assess the relationship between the regime of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, or “the Convention”) and the governance of three sets of emerging technologies: geoengineering, synthetic biology and gene drives, as well as bioinformatics. The linkages between biodiversity and technology go beyond these cases, with, for example, geographic information systems, satellite imagery or possibly even blockchain technology playing potentially important roles for implementing the CBD’s objectives. Here, however, we focus on technologies that have been subject to extensive debate and rulemaking activity under the CBD.