As the first week of negotiations at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) concludes, civil society including climate justice, indigenous peoples and youth organizations are encouraging the continuation of the CBD. There is. Recognize the dangers of geoengineering and provide leadership in addressing them.
Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group Latin America Director
The CBD has been said to be a world leader since 2010, adopting a historic de facto moratorium on geoengineering at COP10 and reaffirming it at COP13 in 2016.
“The CBD understood early on that climate change will have a huge impact on biodiversity and that some measures to ‘tame’ the climate crisis may actually make it worse. I did. The CBD has therefore taken a landmark decision calling for a moratorium on climate geoengineering. With the explosion of dangerous geoengineering proposals aimed at altering marine and terrestrial ecosystems, with serious environmental and social impacts, the CBD needs to reaffirm precautionary measures. “There is,” said Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group's Latin America director.
As the climate and biodiversity crisis continues to deepen, it is essential that CBD maintains a precautionary approach to geoengineering, which can have far-reaching impacts on people, communities, biodiversity and the climate.
Mary Church of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) said: “Geoengineering is a dangerous practice that distracts from real solutions to the climate crisis. It gives the illusion that there is.” If you can find it, there's a bullet point or quick fix there. If introduced at scale, these inherently unpredictable technologies can have significant and irreversible impacts on biodiversity and communities.
“Since it is impossible to test the intended climate impacts without large-scale deployment, geoengineering proposes to turn the Earth into a dangerous laboratory. We need to protect and take steps to prevent geoengineering from becoming a normal part of climate debate and policy, including banning outdoor geoengineering experiments.”
Geoengineering also poses new risks to the lives and livelihoods of indigenous peoples and the traditional communities and fishing communities that depend on these ecosystems.
Adrian Arkaluk Titus of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) said: “The very existence of the world depends on the rich biodiversity of ecosystems maintained by indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Our lands are not your science labs. It is imperative that we make the transition away from extractive industries and the false solutions that support capitalism, such as geoengineering and climate manipulation, to ensure a healthy Mother Earth for future generations. We must put our stakeholders at the forefront.”
Youth groups are concerned about the lack of transparency around the risks and impacts of geoengineering as it is promoted as a “solution” to the climate and biodiversity crises.
“Young people deserve honest information about these dangerous technologies, not false promises. We demand global respect. The communities harmed by these experiments speak out and we “solve” climate change while profiting from the same systems that caused it. We reject technology companies' false promises and false solutions. Real solutions will come from grassroots communities, not from geoengineering labs,” added Alejandro Jaimes of the Nongovernmental Alliance for Radical Youth (ANGRY).
