The UN World Oceans Day is celebrated amidst ongoing deliberations in Bonn, centering on conflicting responses regarding the embrace of geoengineering or other actions to safeguard water bodies from biodiversity loss and pollution. There is deep concern about the growing number of open-air and marine geoengineering experiments conducted in defiance of international agreements, prompting calls for governments to prevent individual corporations and international organizations from undertaking such activities.

Civil society organizations (CSOs), NGOs, climate justice networks, social justice movements, and Indigenous Peoples groups worldwide have expressed deep concerns about the increasing number of these geoengineering experiments. Over 100 CSOs from both the Global South and the Global North raised the issue during the Oceans Dialogue at the UNFCCC 60th subsidiary body meeting in Bonn, criticizing the meetings as platforms for geoengineering proponents to legitimize marine geoengineering.

Geoengineering refers to large-scale technological interventions designed to manipulate the Earth’s oceans, land, and atmosphere with claims of addressing climate change. These actions include schemes such as spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight (Solar Radiation Management) and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or capturing it from industrial pollution sites (Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)).

The embrace of CDR methods, like carbon credits as a means to offset emissions, has been seen as undermining the essential phasing out of fossil fuels. Evident is the recent experiment rolled out to brighten clouds in Alameda, California, which was halted thanks to local authorities citing potential environmental and health concerns.

Eesha Rangani of the Hands Off Mother Earth! (HOME) Alliance stressed that geoengineering our oceans is a dangerous distraction from real climate solutions.

She emphasized that as another session of the UN climate talks is taking place, governments must step up, take responsibility to prevent such experiments, uphold international regulations, and protect marine ecosystems and dependent communities.

In her urgent call, she called for prioritizing real climate solutions like providing climate finance and phasing out fossil fuels while supporting socially and ecologically sustainable alternatives.

What’s At Stake?

Case Study: Alameda City Shows Technofixes are a Dangerous Distraction

Based on a statement released last month, civil society reiterated that these projects, often driven by carbon offsets, pose significant threats to not only marine ecosystems but also to Indigenous peoples and communities.

Silvia Ribeiro from the ETC Group emphasized that techniques like ocean alkalinization, large algae monocultures, biomass sinking, and other geoengineering methods claim to remove carbon from the ocean but are unproven and risky.

Notably, these methods could disrupt marine food chains, cause oxygen depletion in some ocean layers, and threaten natural marine ecosystems, which already play a vital role in absorbing CO2.

Despite a de facto moratorium on geoengineering under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), commercial interests linked to carbon markets and misguided attempts to tackle climate change have driven many of these experiments.

A recent occurrence of an experiment to brighten clouds in Alameda, California, is a wake-up call that these experiments are being undertaken with little to no knowledge of the civilians about their merits and demerits.

Mary Church, Geoengineering Campaign Manager at the Center for International Environmental Law, commended the Alameda City Council’s unanimous decision to reject the first open-air Marine Cloud Brightening experiment in the US. She stated that the rejection rightly reflects the gravity of what’s at stake for both local and global communities.

In addition to potential impacts on marine life and fragile ecosystems, marine geoengineering poses new risks to the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples, traditional communities, and fisherfolk who rely on marine and coastal ecosystems.

Panganga Pungowiyi, Geoengineering Organizer of the Indigenous Environment Network, said that air and marine geoengineering experiments, predominantly conducted on Indigenous territories, pose a grave threat to the sacredness of all life and the traditional values of Indigenous Peoples.

Attributable to a Human Rights Council report’s findings that “the potential deployment of [geoengineering technologies] would have a massive and disproportionate impact on Indigenous Peoples whose traditional lands and territories are particularly exposed and at risk of experimental uses.”

Panganga Pungowiyi revealed that marine geoengineering initiatives proceed without the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) of Indigenous communities, perpetuating a cycle where companies profit by marketing these projects as carbon credits, enabling continued pollution by fossil fuel companies.

“The impending widespread implementation of geoengineering at a scale not only endangers Indigenous lifeways and cosmovision but also undermines the delicate balance of Mother Earth. Indigenous Peoples, who have lived in a relationship with their ecosystems for time immemorial, must be at the table to discuss climate crisis strategies. We have not been informed, asked, nor have we given our consent,” said Panganga.