As the climate emergency intensifies, geoengineering technologies are increasingly being promoted as necessary to supplement mitigation to counteract some of the worst effects of climate change.
CIEL and a global coalition of partners are working to ensure there is robust, international governance to restrict these dangerous technofixes. Ranging from ineffective and untested to profoundly dangerous and potentially catastrophic, geoengineering threatens people, Indigenous rights, wildlife, ecosystems, the global climate, and peace. Worryingly, calls for research into and governance of solar geoengineering are already diverting attention away from real solutions.
After a private, US-based start-up began unauthorized experimental solar geoengineering flights in Mexico this year, CIEL and partners from the Hands Off Mother Earth alliance raised the alarm in the media. The Mexican government then announced it would ban solar geoengineering experiments and deployment on its national territory. This step is supported by a de-facto global moratorium in place at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since 2010. CIEL supports the call from leading academics for a solar geoengineering non-use agreement that would forbid governments from financing the dangerous development of solar geoengineering technologies with public funds, and ban all outdoor experiments, patenting, and deployment.