CDRANet draft policy

CDR Community Policy forum
1

Dear Uptake Colleagues,

The CDRANet team is currently working on a draft of its global CDR policy. We’re debating one section each week; this week it’s Science & Technology (see section 2A). Specifically, what Sci-Tech recommendations should a global policy on CDR include? We’d love your feedback on this (and other parts of the draft). If you aren’t already part of CDRANet, you can just email your ideas to info@cdranet.org (and if you’d like to join CDRANet, please send your request to join to the same email address).

Thank you!

Glenn Hampson

The Athens Declaration of 2026 (v.14)
On Global Cooperation to Remove Carbon Dioxide

:white_check_mark: See change log, below
:speech_balloon: Indicates section has been discussed on the listserv (see calendar; additional edits welcome)

:speech_balloon: Preamble

  • Whereas the World Meteorological Organization reports that earth’s surface temperature in 2024 was 1.55C higher than pre-industrial levels, exceeding the 1.5C warming maximum established by the UN-mediated Paris Agreement,
  • Whereas this temperature increase is not slowing, and may soar as high as 3.4 C over pre-industrial levels by the year 2060,
  • Whereas scientific assessments have historically underestimated the speed of changes and the presence of tipping points in the response of natural and human systems,
  • Whereas even a 1.5C degree temperature increase is causing the melting of polar ice, sea levels to rise, and ocean acidity to increase, all of which pose a grave and immediate risk to the social, economic, and political stability of human society and the environmental stability of our planet,
  • Whereas the chief cause of this temperature increase is the emission of carbon dioxide associated with human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels,
  • Whereas research indicates the only assured way to prevent global temperatures from continuing to climb for centuries more is to remove carbon dioxide from our atmosphere at a scale that offsets emissions, referred to as “net zero” emissions.
  • Whereas scientists from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have advised since the early 1990s that removing this excess, human-generated carbon dioxide is necessary both to reach net zero and also to draw down legacy emissions after net zero is reached by the year 2050,
  • Whereas we will need to remove between 400 and 1400 gigatons (Gt) of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere by the year 2100, assuming we reach net zero by 2050 (with most recommendations estimating annual removals of 10 Gt/yr by 2050),
  • Whereas developing our global carbon dioxide removal (CDR) capacity to scale will require substantial investments and deployment across a wide variety of regions and technologies, plus significant cooperation spanning many local, state, national and international marketplaces and regulatory bodies,
  • Whereas reaching net zero by 2050 may, in fact, not happen now because the global carbon dioxide reduction goals of most nations (as set by the Paris Agreement) have not been met and these current goals are not sufficient to get on a 1.5C pathway,

Therefore, the global Carbon Dioxide Removal Action Network (CDRANet), a high-level global group of 265 climate and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) leaders and experts representing 35 countries, 20 stakeholder groups, and over 200 institutions, agrees on the following course of action and advises all governments and institutions to adopt these recommendations and integrate them into their climate policies and action plans.

SECTION 1: FRAMEWORK

:speech_balloon: A. Goals

  1. Unite in common cause to accelerate the removal of carbon dioxide from the earth’s environment at a scale (whatever quantities are recommended by the best available science) and pace sufficient to achieve net zero by 2040;
  2. Restore the natural balance of the earth’s environment by continuing to remove carbon dioxide after 2040 in order to eliminate generations of accumulated pollution;
  3. Protect societies, cultures, livelihoods and environmental systems from further damage being caused by this pollution (see 1E);
  4. Create new jobs and new economic opportunities around the future of carbon dioxide removal (see 2B);
  5. Work together globally across the technical and policy spectrums in order to coordinate our ideas, investments, knowledge, policies and actions (see 1B and 2A); and
  6. Create flexible policy frameworks and systems that can be quickly and easily adapted and adopted across a variety of settings to meet a variety of international, national, and industrial goals and needs (see 1C).

:speech_balloon: B. Priorities

  1. Recognize that global warming is already severe in many parts of the world, and that we are obligated to move forward with haste to begin removing carbon dioxide pollution at scale in order to help protect these regions and populations from further serious harm (see 1E);
  2. Embrace the vital role of government in addressing the global warming crisis and encourage widespread and significant government leadership and support at all levels and across all regions, by whatever means possible, including but not limited to public financial support and guarantees, accelerated permitting, public lands provision, legal protections, expanded public-private partnerships and information-sharing, and both unilateral and multilateral actions;
  3. Greatly increase our focus on carbon dioxide removal in government and industry policies (which usually emphasize conservation, mitigation, conversion, and adaptation more than removal) as well as funding for carbon dioxide removal without diminishing existing policies and funding. Setting separate targets for removals and reductions may help in this regard, ensuring that both existing climate policies and new carbon dioxide removal policies receive adequate separate attention and support (see 2D);
  4. Support all requirements for an accelerated approach to carbon dioxide removal, including but not limited to greatly accelerating R&D and commercial demonstration, standardizing market and regulatory policies (to enable rapid investment and scaling), aligning incentives, improving public acceptance, ensuring community engagement (to agree on risks and benefits, enrich economic opportunities, and protect against negative social and environmental impacts), clarifying the business model, and strengthening industry and government partnerships (to increase collaboration opportunities, share lessons of experience, and protect against becoming overly dependent on any single country or stakeholder group; see also 1E);
  5. Start building government-funded (in whole or in part) CDR solutions as soon as possible that promise the fastest large-scale carbon dioxide removals with the lowest risk (recognizing that different regions will adopt different solutions, and that these solutions should be adopted through a process that also considers social and environmental factors and impacts);
  6. Invest in a variety of CDR approaches to hedge our technology bets, spread financial and environmental risks, maximize the potential of different CDR approaches for different regions, capitalize on the benefits of existing infrastructure (such as rail lines, pipelines, timber industries, and state-owned lands), and spread job creation benefits;
  7. Avoid approaches that might inhibit market growth and opportunities, such as investing heavily in sequestration but not utilization, assuming that markets will make better decisions than governments with regard to technology solutions and standards, or believing that communities will embrace all CDR approaches equally. Endeavor to strike the right balance between nurturing the CDR market and picking winners;
  8. Emphasize (in both policy and outreach) the importance of CDR for preserving traditional livelihoods, enhancing agriculture, saving marine life, restoring environmental quality, increasing water supplies, reducing the incidence of wildfires and extreme weather, slowing coastal erosion, and creating thousands of new jobs in various CDR- and carbon-related industries;
  9. Continue advancing non carbon dioxide GHG removal policies and programs; and
  10. Accelerate research into (and pilot testing of) geoengineering solutions such as solar radiation modification that can quickly and safely halt global temperature increases while our CDR capacity reaches scale.

C. Policy Integration

  1. Our commitment to CDR needs new and separate agreements between countries and institutions. It is insufficient to expect these agreements to evolve as sub-paragraphs of existing climate treaties like COP that operate on much longer timelines. The need for action is immediate, and developing rapid solutions requires new, more focused, and more responsive mechanisms.
  2. At the same time, CDR must be woven into existing climate policies, whether this means simply referencing this need in existing policies or creating new standalone policies, integrating CDR into the broader global plan for a climate-friendly sustainable development future, or having CDR needs addressed by the industrial waste policies of each jurisdiction instead of global climate policies. Evolving best practices will be catalogued and shared with the global CDR policy community.
  3. The implicit economic assumption that CDR will replace decarbonization efforts (because it is cheaper) needs to be set aside. The reality is that we need both CDR and decarbonization in order to save our planet. We can’t do either or both halfway.

D. Global Involvement

  1. Existing UN-led climate policies alone cannot keep our planet from overheating. Strong action by countries that go above and beyond UN policy recommendations is therefore encouraged. This approach will only work if our actions are coordinated, however, with regard to research, finance, construction, standards, data collection, monitoring, risk reduction, best practices communication, technology sharing, and more. We therefore recommend establishing a new multilateral agency outside the UN (so as to avoid policy entanglement), managed by participating governments and industries, to help drive this important work forward.
  2. From one government and institution to the next, there is no consistent approach to CDR management. This expertise may be situated in an environment ministry or an international affairs ministry; a sustainability department or a disaster preparedness department; or a special cabinet office that draws in officials from across government. There may be a single official tasked with a wide range of responsibilities, including CDR, or the CDR expert may be assigned to a technical sector completely removed from climate conversations. In order to ensure effective global cooperation at the highest levels of decision-making in governments and institutions, we recommend that these offices and responsibilities be elevated, standardized (to the extent possible) and made more visible and powerful across governments and institutions in order to enable easier and more effective global collaboration on this pressing challenge.

E. Risk and Ethics

  1. Climate change is already affecting the most vulnerable regions of our world the most severely. The world has a moral and ethical obligation to protect these regions from harm, and also a legal and financial obligation since the vast majority of the carbon dioxide pollution driving global warming has been emitted by wealthy industrialized countries over the past several centuries.
  2. CDR is needed to restore historically normal climate conditions to our planet, and to protect and preserve the environment and societies everywhere. However, we cannot move forward quickly with CDR solutions without frameworks and safeguards in place to ensure just, equitable, and ethical outcomes.
  3. All earth system modifications at scale have the potential for unanticipated consequences, from the generations of sunlight-reflecting emissions from combustion to centuries of coal-fired power plant emissions. CDR deployment also has potential consequences beyond CO2 removal. But not all geoengineering is created equal. Even though the goal of CDR is to clean up legacy emissions and restore our atmosphere to a pre-industrial stage, the fact that change must happen rapidly and at scale means we must use all available tools to understand the potential impacts of CDR technologies, and design options based on the best science and on community engagement regarding risks and benefits.
  4. Avoid erecting barriers to immediate progress on CDR, such as banning fossil fuel use altogether (especially in developing countries) or expecting trillion dollar annual payouts from rich countries. Fossil-based power generation and transportation assets will live out their useful lives and even be renewed into the foreseeable future (especially transportation), and the uncertain fate of US climate policy eliminates any prospect of massive US subsidies over at least the next five years. Act now, and negotiate issues of justice and liability separately in forums such as the UN.
  5. Because we need to scale our CDR capacity quickly, the lowest risk options should be developed now while we quickly think through the higher risk options. Eventually developing a diverse CDR portfolio will be the most effective way to reach our CDR goals; doing so will also generate the most economic benefit in the widest variety of regions (since different CDR approaches work better in different regions).
  6. Every effort should be made to engage with local communities in this global effort, ensure responsible research, openness and transparency, and informed governance (including effective mechanisms for accountability to a diverse set of representative public institutions and stakeholders); ensure that risks and benefits are clearly communicated, protect against greenwashing, and build bridges with all governments, institutions, industries and funders to ensure the sustainability of this work

SECTION 2: MECHANISMS

A. Science and Technology

  1. Increase investments (public, private and philanthropic) in developing the science, technology, oversight and governance needed to safely test, scale and deploy CDR;
  2. Conduct CDR research, development and demonstration (RD&D) in a coordinated, tech-neutral way that invites and fosters innovation and disruption, fairly evaluating and promoting successes based on objectively measured cost effectiveness, and social and environmental safety;
  3. Develop universal means of objectively assessing cost effectiveness and social and environmental safety/tradeoffs within and across CDR strategies;
  4. Educate stakeholders, decisionmakers and the public on the need for CDR RD&D and include their voices in the process;
  5. Provide a (national/international) means of coordinating and evaluating CDR RD&D and deployment so as to efficiently test and scale diverse technologies/methods and speed application across the globe while avoiding duplication of effort and inefficiency, and allowing quick identification of inappropriate CDR methods;
  6. Commit to sharing the results of CDR RD&D so as to inform decision making on when, where, how or if to promote, invest in and deploy a given CDR strategy;
  7. Create national and international policies and incentives that promote 1-6;
  8. Also in the interest of a comprehensive package of strategies to globally manage CO2 and climate, CDR efforts should coordinate with and help promote RD&D and policies addressing: a) removal of other GHG gasses from the atmosphere, b) reduction of GHG emissions to the atmosphere, and c) solar radiation management.

B. Markets

  1. Governments and institutions must work together to quickly establish mandatory carbon market mechanisms. A number of voluntary market organizations and standards already exist that can be enlisted to manage this new mandatory market.
  2. This flurry of investment and activity around CDR will not go unnoticed in the broader economy. Significant economic opportunities will arise with the growth of the new carbon and circular economy, including millions of new jobs, the creation of a new commodities market, many carbon derivative products and uses (from concrete to plastics), improved agriculture and land use (through the use of carbon-sequestering biochar), healthier fisheries (through reduced ocean acidity), and more. Ample support should be provided for the growth of this nascent industry so it can grow quickly to meet the challenges ahead.

C. Finance

  1. Many of the technologies used in CDR and other greenhouse gas removal require pilot construction assistance to help determine viability, improve initial designs, and speed commercial investment and deployment. Governments should invest heavily in these needs. (See Science-Technology and Priorities sections)
  2. Voluntary or mandatory carbon markets alone are insufficient scale CDR to the levels necessary in the time period needed. Therefore, governments should also become active in carbon purchases, and in addition, should directly finance the research of CDR solutions, help build pilot projects, and contribute a large share of construction cost or underwrite these costs through bond markets or other investment mechanisms. Removing carbon dioxide is a global emergency, and we need to use the full power of governments to address this emergency.

D. Standards

  1. Internationally agreed-upon standards are currently being developed to enable the rapid growth of international carbon credit training. However, for domestic and local markets, jurisdictions should be free to establish whatever standards work best for rapid growth.
  2. An international meeting between voluntary standards organizations should take place to establish a single recommended framework for mandatory standards and mechanisms (including monitoring and verification needs).

E. Legal

  1. The need for CDR is real and immediate, but the R&D and advancement of some forms are currently constrained by permitting and governance agreements that have yet to be formulated or that were created without CDR in mind. Bodies overseeing such permitting must appreciate that the speed with which fair and effective governance can be emplaced will influence the pace at which our full CDR potential can be tested and deployed,
  2. New international agreements for geoengineering (including both CDR and solar radiation modification) should be immediately negotiated as a means of setting boundaries on acceptable experimentation, creating global data monitoring observatories, and establishing annual limits on carbon harvesting, but not defining what technologies can be deployed or where.

We recommend that high-level representatives of countries and institutions who wish to participate in this Agreement meet in late 2026 or early 2027 to sign agreements pursuant to the recommendations contained herein. Additional details are included in the annex section of this Agreement.

Signed this day,

In Athens, Greece

By the following members of CDRANet, on behalf of their organizations: