Iwahori, Takuya

This paper explores some of the multispecies ethical, legal, and social issues (MELSI) regarding the emergent concept and practice of "weather commoning" in the context of Japan's Moonshot Goal 8 project, which aims to develop weather modification technologies by 2050 (https://www.jst.go.jp/moonshot/en/program/goal8/).

We tentatively define weather commons as social-ecological systems that enable collective stewardship of weather-related resources and processes, by promoting cooperation and trust between actors across scales and weather commoning as the act of engaging in social practices and provisioning forms of peer governance that enable the constitution of weather commons.

In light of increasingly frequent and extreme weather events and the development of technological fixes for them (including but not limited to those of Moonshot Goal 8) the prospect of treating weather as a commons raises critical questions about governance, equity, and environmental ethics (at least!). In this panel we would like to discuss the potential benefits and risks of collective weather management, considering issues such as local/regional power dynamics, unintended ecological and social consequences, and the challenge of balancing diverse multispecies stakeholder interests. We will also touch on the legal frameworks that might be relevant for weather commoning in the context of weather modification.

By framing (in the spirit of this panel) the challenges of developing new ways of living with both weather disasters and weather modification as a 'wicked problem,' we highlight the interconnected challenges and propose a multi-layered approach to decision-making that incorporates multispecies ethical, legal, scientific/social issues (MELSI). This work contributes to the broader commons discourse by offering insights into the complexities of “managing” a resource as ubiquitous and vital as weather in an era of technological intervention and climate uncertainty.

In this paper we will present the emergent concept of “weather commoning” which we are exploring in the Weather Commons Research Group based at the Faculty of Collaborative Regional Innovation (Ehime University, Japan) but with collaborators worldwide. Our group is situated within the Japanese Moonshot Goal 8 project for the “realization of a society safe from the threat of extreme winds and rains by controlling and modifying the weather by 2050” (https://www.jst.go.jp/moonshot/en/program/goal8/).

By investigating the relationship between weather-related emergencies, technological interventions, and commoning practices, we hope to contribute to understanding(s) of how communities can collectively build worlds for "living well" with increasingly “bad” weather.

As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, and new techno-solutionist countermeasures (including but not limited to Moonshot Goal 8) are being developed, communities will need to adapt and collaborate in unprecedented ways. In contrast to the climate (longer term, spatially broad, slower change) weather is shorter term, more spatially focused, and relatively variable. The concept of weather commons, then, has a much closer connection to the rhythms of our everyday lives in a spatial and temporal sense than the idea of climate commons. If we (tentatively) define weather commons as social-ecological systems that enable collective stewardship of weather-related resources and processes, by promoting cooperation and trust between actors across scales then weather commoning could be the activities of engaging in social practices and provisioning forms of peer governance that enable the constitution of such a weather commons.

In this paper we will put the work of our Weather Commons Research Group and it into conversation with existing and emergent commons theory and practice to discuss how communities interact with the weather before, during, and after crisis situations, as well as in their everyday lives as “weather commoners” and also consider the potential impacts of weather modification technologies on the emerging weather commons.