In this Manifesto, 23 international organizations -including DAWN-, six “Alternative Nobel Prize” recipients, and 87 national organizations from five continents call for a halt to testing and political consideration of climate geoengineering. The signatories include Indigenous Peoples’ and farmers’ movements and climate justice and environmental networks, among others. It is was released on October 4, in the same week that the Intergovernmental Panel of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC) is meeting in South Korea to debate a new report on how to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsuis. Many predict that the IPCC report will promote the use of controversial and unproven climate geoengineering techniques.

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We, civil society organizations, popular movements, Indigenous Peoples, peasant organizations, academics, intellectuals, writers, workers, artists and other concerned citizens from around the world, oppose geoengineering as a dangerous, unnecessary and unjust proposal to tackle climate change. Geoengineering refers to large-scale technological interventions in the Earth’s oceans, soils and atmosphere with the aim of weakening some of the symptoms of climate change.

Geoengineering perpetuates the false belief that today’s unjust, ecologically- and socially-devastating industrial model of production and consumption cannot be changed and that we therefore need techno-fixes to tame its effects. However, the shifts and transformations we really need to face the climate crisis are fundamentally economic, political, social and cultural.

Mother Earth is our common home and its integrity must not be violated by geoengineering experimentation and deployment.

We are committed to protecting Mother Earth and defending our rights, territories and peoples against anyone attempting to take control of the global thermostat or the vital natural cycles of planetary functions and ecosystems.

Healthy ecosystems and cultural and biological diversity are crucial to the well-being of all people, societies and economies. Geoengineering, whether on land, in the oceans or in the atmosphere, puts ecosystems, biodiversity and human communities at risk of potentially devastating impacts and side effects.

We reject any further entrenchment of fossil fuel economies. We reject geoengineering as an attempt to uphold a failed status quo and divert attention from emissions reductions and the real solutions to the climate crisis.

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) geoengineering projects, including large scale monoculture tree and biomass plantations have severe negative impacts on land, water, biodiversity, food security and traditional livelihoods. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) aim to serve and perpetuate the fossil fuel industry. Additionally, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) would hugely amplify the impacts of plantations, disputing land needed for food production, threatening food security and biodiversity. Other carbon dioxide removal techniques, such as ocean fertilization would disrupt the marine food web and create oxygen deprived areas in the oceans.

Geoengineering technologies may disrupt local and regional weather patterns and further imbalance the climate, with potentially catastrophic effects for some regions, including on water availability and food production. The adverse impacts and side effects could cause more regional and international conflicts.

Geoengineering threatens global peace and security. Some technologies that aim to manipulate climate and weather originated in the military and have a significant potential to be weaponized. Deploying Solar Radiation Management in particular may depend on military infrastructure and could create a new geopolitical imbalance of winners and losers in the race to control the Earth’s thermostat.

We stand united to oppose field experiments and deployment of such technologies and call upon organizations and concerned citizens to join this campaign.

Because of the high risks that geoengineering poses to biodiversity, the environment and livelihoods, including to peasant communities and Indigenous Peoples territories, we call for:

• A ban on geoengineering field experiments and deployment
• A United Nations multilateral governance system that is global, transparent, participatory and accountable to uphold the ban. The Convention on Biological Diversity’s moratorium on geoengineering and the London Protocol ban on ocean fertilization are starting points
• A stop to all planned outdoor geoengineering experiments, including:
  • SCoPEx, the Stratospheric Aerosol Injection experiment by the Harvard Solar Geoengineering Program, planned to be carried out in Arizona near the U.S.- Mexico Border in 2018;
  • The Marine Cloud Brightening Project experiment planned for Monterey Bay, California;
  • The Ice911 project, which aims to disseminate glass microbeads over ice and sea in Alaska;
  • and The Oceanos Ocean Fertilization projects in Chile, Perú and Canada
• A stop to all large-scale projects and funding for projects that aim to technologically capture carbon and “sequester” it in geological formations and/or the oceans, and/or use it for enhanced oil recovery and/or industrial applications, including Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS); Bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) and Direct Air Capture (DAC). We reject CCS in all forms including from gas processing, coal plants, bioenergy or industrial processes including fracking. CCS and Carbon Capture Use and Storage (CCUS) projects such as PetraNova in Texas, Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan, Decatur in Illinois, and DRAX in the UK only perpetuate the fossil fuel industry
• A stop to all large scale monoculture plantations
• A stop to any public funding for geoengineering projects
• Recognition of the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples, their livelihoods and cosmovisions, including the right of Self Determination to defend their communities, ecosystems and all life from geoengineering technologies and practices that violate the natural laws, creative principles and the Territorial Integrity of Mother Earth and Father Sky
• Respect and effective guarantees for the right of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to free, prior and informed consent for any geoengineering experiment or project that may impact their territories or human rights
• Respect for peasant rights, lands and territories, acknowledging that their livelihoods, including Indigenous Peoples’ communities, forest dwellers, artisanal fishers and pastoralists, are a vital source of food for most of the world’s population; pave the way for food sovereignty; contribute to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions; and regenerate soils and ecosystems. Their lands are particularly vulnerable to being grabbed and exploited for geoengineering experiments and deployment, and their agriculture is threatened by the side effects.
• Support for and strengthening of meaningful investigations into just, sustainable and transformative pathways to limit global warming to not exceed 1.5°C, giving serious consideration to alternative models and scenarios than those currently being used in climate negotiations and taking into account other sources of knowledge and experiences into debate and decision making, including Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and peasant movements´ proposals.
• The building blocks for a justice-based, transformative trajectory towards a 1.5°C world are being articulated and developed by communities, activists and scholars across the world. The solutions will be manifold, diverse and mindful of local and regional contexts. They include phasing out fossil fuel infrastructure – not just coal, but also oil and gas; expanding energy democracy powered by renewable energy from wind and solar; reducing energy and material consumption; a just transition for workers and towards a feminist and regenerative economy; supporting peasant agroecology and food sovereignty for climate justice in the food system; as well as vastly but carefully restoring the world’s vital ecosystems, above all forests, integrating and respecting Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights.

Climate justice will only be achieved if we rely on environmentally sustainable and socially just solutions to the climate crisis instead of high-risk technofixes that privilege current polluters, extractive industries and the military-security complex.

Our home, lands and territories are not a laboratory for planetary-scale environmental modification technologies.

We say to geoengineers: Hands Off Mother Earth!

Download the PDF of the Manifesto to see the full list of signatories organizations and individuals.