CDR & The Frontline

• Ikaika Hussey, Founder, Hawaii Federated Industries
• Dr. Edidiong Mendie, Green Criminologist, Environmental Justice Advocate, California State University-Sacramento
• James Mwangi, Executive Director, The Dalberg Group
• Nikhil Neelakantan, Program Manager, Ocean Visions Launchpad

• Moderated by Megha Raghavan, Lead Advocate, OpenAir

Carbon removal describes diverse practices that draw down existing greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. The IPCC’s most recent assessment reports since 2018, including Mitigation of Climate Change released in April 2022, warn explicitly that carbon removal on a gigaton scale (i.e. billions of tons)is now an “unavoidable” imperative for achieving Paris Agreement targets. This is in addition to the vast parallel investments in rapid, economy-wide decarbonization and adaptation that are also required in the more immediate term.

The current and future impacts of climate change are, and will increasingly be, unevenly distributed across places and populations. The implications and stakes involved in carbon removal’s future development are therefore most heightened on the frontlines of the climate emergency, in communities that face the highest levels of vulnerability and risk.

Frontline perspectives concerning carbon removal are far from uniform. However, the vantage point afforded from places where the climate emergency is now experienced as a real and present danger inevitably offers insights and knowledge that cannot easily be gained from positions of lower risk.

In this discussion, hosted by OpenAir and moderated by advocate Megha Raghavan, leading frontline thinkers, doers and advocates will share their ideas on the meaning, import and ultimate promise of carbon removal for the world, and the communities they represent .