Submitted by Ronnie Hall on
by Kavya Chowdhry, ETC Group & Coraina de la Plaza, Hands Off Mother Earth! (HOME) Alliance
This article was published 28 October, in ECO 70(6), the magazine of the CBD Alliance. It concludes with recommendations for governments negotiating at the CBD’s COP 16, in Cali, Colombia.
In the race to save the planet, some have found what they think might be a clever shortcut: geoengineering. Geoengineering refers to the large-scale manipulation of the atmosphere and marine and terrestrial ecosystems to try to address some symptoms of climate change. So why tackle the root causes of climate change when you could modify the atmosphere or oceans and sell carbon credits by manipulating nature on a massive scale?
Geoengineering proponents say we can absorb CO2 or reflect sunlight back into space—all while continuing to rely on fossil fuels. If deployed at scale, these technologies could have profound, unpredictable and potentially irreversible impacts on biodiversity and further pose a range of unprecedented geopolitical, human rights and environmental risks. It is impossible to test geoengineering technologies for their intended impact on the climate without large-scale outdoor deployment, risking lock-in of harmful or even irreversible effects and turning the Earth into a laboratory.
The risks of geoengineering have been acknowledged by UN bodies, especially the CBD, multiple times. In 2008, by consensus of all Parties, the CBD took a groundbreaking decision on ocean fertilization which explicitly ruled it out for commercial purposes.
In 2010, CBD took decision X/33 8w, which called for a de facto moratorium on the deployment of all geo-engineering activities until a set of conditions are met- all of them remain currently unmet. Other bodies like the Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee, the London Convention/London Protocol (LC/LP), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and have also addressed the impacts of geoengineering.
Despite the de facto moratorium on geoengineering and the concerns expressed by scientific and other UN bodies, geoengineering projects and experiments, including many with commercial aims, are rapidly multiplying, with potentially severe impacts on biodiversity in forests, coastal zones, seas, and the deep ocean. For instance, there are over 40 companies, mostly private and most of them based in the US, that are already doing or planning to do dozens of open-sea marine geoengineering experiments and projects, some of them at a very large scale.
That is why the CBD COP16 presents a crucial opportunity to call for the strengthening, implementation and enforcement of critical prior decisions of the CBD to help prevent the erosion of the de facto moratorium. At COP16, Parties to the CBD should:
- Reaffirm decision X/33 8 (w) on biodiversity and climate change
- Recognize the ongoing work at the London Protocol/London Convention on geoengineering techniques that affect the oceans
- Ensure that solar and marine geoengineering open-field experiments are not permitted
- Ensure that geoengineering activities are excluded in the implementation of the KMGBF
- Require all CBD parties to regularly report on any geoengineering initiatives in or by their countries
- Mandate the CBD Secretariat to proactively reach out to all other UN bodies that are discussing geoengineering (i.e. ongoing negotiations on a new carbon regime under the UNFCCC) requesting they honour relevant CBD decisions.
Image: speakers including from ETC Group at the Hands Off Mother Earth! Alliance side event on geoengineering at COP 16 in Colombia, 24 October