- The history of geoengineering policymaking has been piecemeal over past decades, with U.N. bodies failing to create or implement rigorous binding international regulatory frameworks for geoengineering management, and with academia and think tanks delivering reports and recommendations that offer little definitive detailed regulatory guidance.
- Now, as climate change impacts intensify, the debate over what safe, effective national and international geoengineering policies should look like has intensified among academics, regulatory and advisory bodies and researchers.
- Meanwhile, scientists continue trying to find out if geoengineering (the deliberate altering of global atmospheric or oceanic conditions), can help cool off a dangerously warming planet without triggering harmful effects.
- Some warn geoengineering is too risky and want field research stopped. Others say research is urgently needed so decision-makers can understand geoengineering options and risks, so as to make informed choices. For now, few definitive road signs exist to guide policymaking.
In the 2020 science-fiction novel The Ministry for the Future, author Kim Stanley Robinson imagines a near-future climate catastrophe in which a deadly heat dome stalls over India, killing millions of people. Its government, in defiance of the United Nations, launches fleets of aircraft to seed the stratosphere with cooling sulfate aerosols, despite a dearth of knowledge on geoengineering risks.
An international taskforce is hurriedly formed to deal proactively with the out-of-control climate crisis. Throughout the book, this body, dubbed the Ministry for the Future, races to recover from three decades of failed international climate policymaking. Elsewhere, geoengineering researchers hurriedly launch studies to save Antarctica from melting, and the world from cataclysmic sea level rise.
The novel received worldwide attention, with entrepreneur Bill Gates calling it “harrowing” for its depiction of near-future events. But it’s a tome that would likely be beyond the realm of possibility if only world leaders had long ago set humanity on a glide path to deep carbon cuts and an energy transition.
Now, with every passing year and each failed U.N. climate summit (this year will mark COP29), policymaker discussions have increasingly turned to a desperate Hail Mary pass that might yet buy humanity some time before climate catastrophe strikes: geoengineering. Today, decision-makers are considering strategies that range from redirecting solar energy back into space using giant orbiting mirrors to releasing reflective aerosols into the stratosphere and dumping various things into the ocean or on croplands to suck carbon out of the sky.
But it’s not clear if or when such technologies can work, let alone who should perform or control these planetary interventions. Nor is it known if altering the skies or seas to cool one region might bring intense heat or destructive drought elsewhere.
“Changes that help one region could harm another, and the effects may not be clear until it’s too late,” wrote David Kitchen, geology professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. In an interview, Kitchen said, “Everybody understands something needs to be done but nobody knows quite how to go about it.”
A history of flawed policymaking
Governments, international organizations, think tanks and academic institutions haven’t ignored the monumental questions posed by geoengineering. They’ve wrestled with them for more than a decade but mostly without coming to firm conclusions or consensual decisions. That has left the world far from formulating an international strategy for guiding geoengineering research and deployment.
In that administrative vacuum, individual nations have acted — while others have failed to act. Mexico banned geoengineering experiments in 2023 after a private company invaded its airspace with balloons conducting rudimentary geoengineering research. In the U.S., the only regulation relevant to the issue dates to 1972 and merely requires notifying the Commerce Department in advance of any plan to seed clouds to induce rain, or set fires to reduce fog or influence air currents.
But as the world gets hotter, louder warnings sound: In a 2021 paper, the Brookings Institution wrote, “Although much is still unknown about geoengineering, the United States cannot afford to wait to act.” The think tank called for the development of international monitoring (likely by satellite) and policies for responding to unsanctioned geoengineering deployment by other countries, and it stressed the need for the U.S. to lead in creating global standards.
Major American universities are presently examining regulatory options. In 2023, the University of Chicago started a Climate Systems Engineering initiative, which is studying geoengineering strategies ranging from the redirection of a portion of the sun’s rays to the injection of sea salt into clouds as a means for protecting glaciers. In April, the Simons Foundation, which funds science projects, awarded 14 grants to explore ways to cool the atmosphere, while another recent report evaluated 61 options for cooling the Arctic, including marine cloud brightening and other untried geoengineering techniques.
In the U.K., the Climate Geoengineering Governance Project, a collaboration of English institutes of higher learning, warned a decade ago of possible military or rogue uses of geoengineering and of the likely difficult path to negotiating an international treaty regulating planetwide atmospheric changes.
The U.K. project warned that “it is hard to avoid the conclusion geoengineering won’t work, it will be ungovernable … and will have extremely costly social and economic consequences of such a magnitude to make [it] untenable.” The writers pointed to past failed efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons as an example of the problems facing geoengineering deployment.
Five years ago, the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements warned that a “treaty prohibiting solar geoengineering would have little effect, because the countries likely to use geoengineering would choose not to participate in the treaty.”
Policymakers struggle to regulate solar radiation modification
The most talked-about geoengineering technique currently is solar radiation modification (SRM), especially adding sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere to cool the planet. But a 2023 review of SRM by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found “little information” available on its risks and concluded there “needs to be significantly more scientific research into the potential impacts of SRM technologies on low- and middle-income countries.”
SRM has also attracted the attention of the Biden administration, but it hasn’t yet formulated a policy. A White House study released in 2023 merely concluded that the risks and benefits of SRM need to be considered vs. the risks and benefits of no SRM. That study, too, cited the need for more research and suggested international cooperation, but it didn’t get specific about making this happen.
The U.S. doesn’t stand alone among nations lacking policy. Last December, the German government issued an 87-page Strategy on Climate Foreign Policy that devotes just one paragraph to SRM, noting that the government isn’t currently involved in it but will “analyse and assess the extensive scientific, technological, political, social and ethical risks and implications.”
Perhaps the closest thing to an international SRM agreement is found within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that UNEP adopted in 2010. The CBD disallows any climate-related geoengineering activities taking place “in the absence of science based, global, transparent and effective control and regulatory mechanisms,” and rules that no deployment should take place “until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities … [with] consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity [plus] social, economic and cultural impacts.” The CBD allows an exception for “small scale scientific research … to gather specific scientific data.”
The CBD, which the United States never joined, could one day become a nuanced international mechanism for geoengineering management, according to some experts. But the periodic summits of its parties have only called for further study, and CBD has not received a mandate to do more.
The U.S. and other “states that are non-parties to the CBD have to take into account what the vast majority of countries in the world have recognized: that deployment of geoengineering poses unacceptable risks and should not go ahead,” Mary Church, the geoengineering campaign manager for the Center for International Environmental Law, said in an email.
There is a second U.N. agreement that has bearing on geoengineering, but only in connection with ocean dumping: the London Convention and Protocol on the Prevention of Marine Pollution. In a 2013 amendment, policymakers outlined international restrictions on ocean fertilization as a means of absorbing carbon. But that amendment has only been accepted by six parties, (the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Estonia and Germany) and has yet to come into force. Last October, the 101 protocol parties agreed that ocean geoengineering outside of scientific research “should be deferred,” particularly for four technologies: “ocean alkalinity enhancement; biomass cultivation for carbon removal; marine cloud brightening; and surface albedo enhancement involving reflective particles and/or other materials.”
Starting in 2016, the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative initiated an eight-year project to study the challenges of carbon removal and SRM in order, it said, to bring the topic to the attention of world governments. In 2023, declaring its mission complete, the initiative folded. Since then, “discussions by governments have moved forward — perhaps not as fast as the world might need,” executive director Janos Pasztor wrote in an email to Mongabay. The “task now is to actively advocate for or against the research of, and for or against the eventual deployment, of such techniques.”
The Carnegie initiative did come to one firm conclusion: that the geoengineering strategies it analyzed won’t solve the climate crisis alone. If ever implemented, deployments would still need to be accompanied by simultaneous reductions or elimination of carbon emissions.
Wrangling over international policy
In line with the CBD and London Protocol, a U.N. Environment Assembly (UNEA) expert panel on SRM determined in 2023 that “a speculative group of technologies to cool the Earth … requires far more research into its risks and benefits before any consideration for potential deployment.”
The U.S. State Department agreed with that finding and provided Mongabay with a statement noting “[W]e recognize the considerable lack of information and transparency on SRM, and that this information gap varies widely from country to country. This is one reason that, during the Sixth UNEA [meeting] that took place earlier this year [in Kenya], we expressed interest in supporting proposals for a repository of scientific information jointly hosted by relevant UN organizations.”
But at that February 2024 meeting, the U.S.-sponsored geoengineering research proposal, put forward by Switzerland, was soundly rejected by African nations concerned that the Global North would deploy geoengineering projects harmful to the Global South; they instead proposed a geoengineering “nonuse” agreement, which was also a nonstarter.
The U.N. Human Rights Council Advisory Committee has expressed concerns that geoengineering deployment could interfere with human rights, especially in less developed countries. “So far, new and emerging technologies intended for climate protection have not been extensively examined from the human rights viewpoint,” the committee stated in a 2023 report.
It warned further that unproven technologies could “change precipitation patterns and pollute freshwater resources and thus pose a threat to food and water security, imperil livelihoods and lead to mass displacements of persons. Most carbon dioxide removal technologies require vast swathes of land and extensive water resources, potentially increasing the demand for water and, therefore, affecting food production and access to water. SRM could also reduce the availability of freshwater on islands that already face water shortages.”
The 2023 report recommended that nations “rigorously apply the precautionary principle and develop and conduct meaningful, comprehensive risk, human rights and environmental impact assessments” and develop “effective procedures to seek the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples and meaningfully consult peasants, local communities and other affected or particularly interested groups.” Put simply: Because geoengineering strategies would alter the planet’s climate, everyone needs a say.
“We must pursue the path best aligned with human rights, including the ‘right to science’ (the right of everyone to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications)…. We believe that at this time, efforts which could legitimize potential deployment of climate altering technologies are inconsistent with such a path,” Ana Paula Souza, human rights officer on the Environment and Climate Change Team of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote in an email to Mongabay.
The commissioner hasn’t taken any action on geoengineering since the 2023 report was issued, Souza said. But in May, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea issued an advisory opinion stating that marine geoengineering violates the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea when it turns one pollutant into another, and that nations must take all steps to prevent it.
To study, or not to study?
Geoengineering policy discussions continue to evolve, but some officials, scientists and activists argue that basic research needs either a moratorium, more regulation or even an outright ban.
Geoengineering Monitor, for example, cites an “alarming expansion of geoengineering research and experimentation.” The monitor, operated by energy watchdogs Biofuelwatch and ETC Group, counted more than 1,700 research projects globally. The monitor is part of the Hands Off Mother Earth! campaign against geoengineering started in 2010. At last count, 195 organizations from 45 countries have signed its manifesto to ban all geoengineering efforts, including experiments.
“That kind of tinkering will make [climate impacts] worse faster. Proponents of different sorts of engineering tend to pick from the sciences what most serves their narratives,” said Gary Hughes, the Americas program coordinator of Biofuelwatch.
But some scientists vigorously argue that basic research should be allowed to go on, and note that field research won’t inevitably lead to deployment. “[T]he way we do existing environmental science research works pretty well. Nothing about solar engineering changes that,” said David Keith, a professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago who has been exploring SRM for years.
In science, “Individual researchers at universities are largely allowed to choose what they want to work on themselves,” subject to funding availability, Keith said. “My job is to try to improve our [scientific] understanding and tell the public and policymakers about it.” Without that understanding, policymakers lack data to guide their decisions, geoengineering research proponents say.
Regarding SRM benefits, Keith was candid: “Nobody can claim to know what the correct answer is.… It would be much better for the world if people were having more [geoengineering] conversations, especially by political leadership.” But, “The power of research is that nobody is in charge. It would be extraordinary (and unprecedented) to put international regulations” on geoengineering studies.
Keith agreed that an international body needs to set and enforce rules, but he noted that governments are nowhere near to figuring that out. Input from everyone is needed, he added, including UNEP, the National Academy of Sciences, the World Meteorological Society and others.
With this July marking the 14th consecutive month to set a global heat record, and 2024 and 2023 likely to be the hottest back-to-back years in history, there is growing concern that global warming and its impacts are escalating far faster than geoengineering policymaking is moving ahead, making the horrific climate disasters painted in the Ministry for the Future increasingly likely, and leaving the world largely unprepared to safely deploy geoengineering as a last resort.
Banner image: There are currently no global policies in place to legally prevent geoengineering deployment. So, a nation, or even a large corporation, without further study, could start sending fleets of planes with aerosol payloads into the stratosphere tomorrow and just hope for the best. Image via Pexels (Public domain).
Cloud brightening over oceans may stave off climate change, but with risk
Citations:
Haque, F., Khalidy, R., Chiang, Y. W., & Santos, R. M. (2023). Constraining the capacity of global croplands to CO<sub>2</sub> Drawdown via mineral weathering. ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, 7(7), 1294-1305. doi:10.1021/acsearthspacechem.2c00374
Nightingale, P., & Cairns, R. (2014). Just a moment... Retrieved from Climate Geoengineering Governance Working Paper Series: 018 website: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308795801_The_Security_Implications_of_Geoengineering_Blame_Imposed_Agreement_and_the_Security_of_Critical_Infrastructure
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.
Credits
