Question-Led Innovation: Public priorities for enhanced weathering research in Malaysia

When upscaling novel techniques for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), public attitudes are crucial, yet there is a serious lack of social science research outside of Western nations. CDR research can clearly benefit from maximising inclusion and opening up to diverse perspectives, including those of local communities, and ideally should involve public insight into the questions we should be prioritising. This paper reports results from a major deliberative study on public perceptions of CDR in Malaysia. We demonstrate a novel, transferrable methodology called “Question-Led Innovation”, in which lay public and local stakeholders are empowered to ask actionable questions on a novel intervention or innovation. These questions are then used as the basis for identifying priorities for future scientific research. We apply the methodology to a case study of CDR via Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) on tropical palm oil agriculture in Sabah. We find that much of the current research on ERW is actually in-line with what our participants most wanted to know about, particularly regarding the rock resource and its sources. Nevertheless, significant knowledge gaps remain, particularly on life-cycle CO₂ emissions and sequestration, and impacts on aquatic life. Many questions also related to socio-economic factors, particularly around governance, regulation, and cost, therefore we argue that such topics should be a priority for future research. Embedding Question-Led Innovation into an ongoing programme of scientific research shapes the future of ERW research to prioritise questions which matter most to people on the ground.