Professor David Schlosberg, Director of the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney, is a co-initiator of a worldwide call by 60 eminent climate science and governance experts to halt research into this ‘widely debated speculative technology’.
The experts say that currently, it cannot be fairly governed and poses unacceptable risks if implemented as a climate policy option.
Announced today, their call is accompanied by an article in journal WIREs Climate Change and an open letter to governments, the United Nations and other powerful actors.
“The risks and efficacy of solar geoengineering are poorly understood,” the group lays out in the article and letter.
“Impacts are likely to vary across regions, as artificial cooling will affect some regions more than others. There are also uncertainties about the effects on regional weather patterns, agriculture, and the provision of basic needs of food and water.”
They add: “Betting on solar geoengineering as a potential future solution threatens commitments to mitigation and can disincentivise governments, businesses, and societies to do their utmost to achieve decarbonisation or carbon neutrality as soon as possible.”
Professor Schlosberg, an expert in environmental and climate justice, says: “Climate justice demands not only considerations of equity, but recognition and inclusive participation in decision making.
“A key danger of geoengineering is the inevitable impact on those who currently have no say in its governance; harms to particular populations are likely.
“Without improved governance, any use of geoengineering violates principles of climate justice – as well as basic principles of democratic legitimacy.”
The expert group has five key demands:
- Prohibit national funding agencies from supporting the development of technologies for solar geoengineering, domestically and through international institutions.
- Ban outdoor experiments of solar geoengineering technologies.
- Refuse patent rights for technologies for solar geoengineering, including supporting technologies such as for the retrofitting of airplanes for aerosol injections.
- Not deploy technologies for solar geoengineering if developed by third parties.
- Object to future institutionalisation of planetary solar geoengineering as a policy option in relevant international institutions, including within assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
For the past few decades to the present, solar geoengineering has been a research topic for just a small group of scientists based largely at elite universities in the US and the UK. The expert group fears that without an international ban or restrictions, a few powerful countries with support from major corporations and philanthropists could engage in solar geoengineering unilaterally or in small coalitions, even when the rest of the world opposes such deployment − or has not yet had the time to assess it and its potential dangers.
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