1 November, 2024

Cali, Colombia

As negotiations at the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP16 draw to a close today, the Hands Off Mother Earth! (HOME) Alliance is calling on CBD to stand firm against risky geoengineering technologies that threaten biodiversity, climate, peoples and communities. Joined by civil society, Indigenous groups, and youth advocates, members of the HOME Alliance, we urge the CBD to maintain its precautionary stance on geoengineering established in 2010, which was reaffirmed in 2016.

For over a decade, the CBD has led the way globally in recognizing the potential dangers of geoengineering. During COP10, it implemented a de facto moratorium on geoengineering to protect biodiversity and Indigenous lands, reaffirming its commitment at COP13 in 2016.

“CBD recognized early on that so-called climate ‘solutions’ like geoengineering could backfire and have grave impacts on biodiversity.. A precautionary approach remains essential, especially as a wave of geoengineering proposals and open air experiments now threatens marine and land ecosystems,” stated Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America Director for ETC Group. “By reaffirming these decisions, the CBD can continue this leadership to prevent irreversible impacts on biodiversity and communities.”

Despite the CBD’s moratorium, commercial and experimental geoengineering activities have accelerated, risking significant harm to human rights and the environment. These highly speculative technologies also risk perpetuating neocolonialism by undermining transformative solutions to the climate crisis while concentrating the power of potential deployment in the hands of major powers and elites, and through land and resource grabs.

Mary Church from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). “Geoengineering technologies pose significant and unprecedented risks to a wide range of human rights, including as a result of harming biodiversity. Human rights ranging from the right to life to the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, right to healthy drinking water, the right to food and children’s rights could all be seriously undermined by geoengineering. Governments must say no to inherently risky and unpredictable technological -fixes and urgently prioritize real solutions to the climate crisis, centering human rights, and starting with a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels.”