NEW YORK, September 26, 2024 – As the 79th UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week draw to a close, momentum to reject solar geoengineering is growing. Countries across Africa, Latin America, the Pacific, and Europe have signaled their support for the Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement initiative, which is already backed by over 500 multidisciplinary academics and almost 2000 civil society organizations.
This week’s visible leadership from the Pacific, with Vanuatu’s strong call for the Non-Use and Germany’s offer of dialogue on such an agreement, build on the Mexican Government’s announcement of a national ban in February 2023, a decision from the African Ministers Conference on the Environment calling for a Non-Use in May 2023, and a European Parliament resolution calling for the same in November 2023. Such calls echoed in negotiating rooms at the UN Environment Assembly in February this year as the Africa Group showed leadership by strongly opposing efforts to undermine the de facto moratorium on geoengineering under the Convention on Biological Diversity, with support from several Global South countries, including Fiji and Colombia, and the EU.
Additionally, President Nangolo Mbumba of Namibia, Co-Facilitator of the Pact for the Future process, used his September 22 opening address to the Summit of the Future to highlight the dangers of geoengineering.
In light of this growing momentum, Mary Church, CIEL’s Geoengineering Campaign Manager, issued the following statement:
“We welcome the growing commitment to Non-Use of Solar Geoengineering as governments around the world identify the enormity of the geopolitical, environmental, and social risks inherent to these technologies. Impossible to test for their intended climate impact without large-scale deployment, these highly speculative technologies put billions of people’s human rights at risk while giving polluting industries a free pass. Planetary-scale speculative techno-fixes like Stratospheric Aerosol Injection would also likely concentrate power in the hands of a few major players. As harmful impacts of any potential future geoengineering deployment would likely hit those on the frontlines of the climate crisis worst, it’s not surprising that Global South countries are taking the lead on resisting the normalization of these dangerous distractions.”
Press contact: press@ciel.org