Geoengineering

Geoengineering

In the wake of the 2015 Paris Agreement adopting “well below 2°C” as the international goal to limit global warming, geoengineering is increasingly seriously being promoted as a technological means to counteract climate change or its effects.

Our web dossier sheds light on the risks of geoengineering for human rights, indigenous and community rights, peace and democracy, food security, biodiversity and ecosystem integrity.

Geoengineering Technologies explained

The notion of geoengineering includes a wide array of technologies centred around reflecting sunlight back into space or removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. All seek to intervene in and alter earth systems on a large scale – a “technofix” to climate change.

The technologies proposed all come with far-reaching and profound social, political, and environmental risks and impacts. The effects would - by nature of the intervention - be transboundary, as well as potentially large-scale, unpredictable and irreversible.

FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions on 1.5°C and Geoengineering

What's the difference between 1.5°C and 2°C? What are "negative emissions"? What's the problem with geoengineering? Why and how is the Heinrich Böll Foundation working on the topic of geoengineering and the 1.5°C limit? Answers to the most frequently asked questions about the 1,5°C target and the topic of geoengineering.

Our recent work on Geoengineering

Geoengineering is a dangerous distraction

Analysis

Geoengineering technologies are considered by many to be the most practicable solution to overcome the climate crisis. They are mainly a means to secure the predominant role of fossil fuels in the economy.

By Carroll Muffett

Fuel to the Fire

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The present report investigates the early, ongoing, and often surprising role of the fossil fuel industry in developing, patenting, and promoting key geoengineering technologies. 

Radical Realism for Climate Justice

Dossier

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial is feasible. Our Dossier is a civil society response to the challenge of such a limitation  that's also paving the way for climate justice. Because it’s is neither ‘naïve’ nor ‘politically unfeasible’, it is radically realistic.

The Big Bad Fix: The case against geoengineering

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Report

The “Big Bad Fix” provides a comprehensive overview of the key actors, technologies and fora relevant in the geoengineering discourse. It opposes geoengineering as a technofix for climate change and as a threat to world peace, democracy and human rights.

Governing the Big Bad Fix? What to do about geoengineering

Geoengineering – large-scale manipulation of the Earth’s natural systems – is increasingly being presented as a strategy to counteract, dilute or delay climate change. Which international legal norms and agreements would contradict the different measures?

By Duncan Currie

The geoengineering fallacy

Geoengineering technologies are not yet deployable globally, but support for them is advancing fast, thanks to backing by powerful advocates eager to start experiments. But no silver bullet for climate change exists, and we must not abandon proven methods for the sake of a promise that one will be found.

By Barbara Unmüßig

Civil society positions and reports

The risks of large-scale biosequestration in the context of Carbon Dioxide Removal

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The Paris Agreement’s target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees is largely dependent on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) approaches and climate finance institutions are already supporting such afforestation schemes. The report describes existing trends in the field of large-scale biosequestration and examines the social and ecological impacts of such projects.

What is wrong with Solar Radiation Management?

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A briefing explaining why Solar Radiation Management (SRM) experiments are a bad idea. SRM describes a set of geoengineering techniques that aim to counter human-made climate change by artificially increasing the reflection of heat from sunlight (solar radiation) back into space. 

Factsheets on Geoengineering

Geoengineering worldwide

Click here to see the full geoengineering map

This interactive geoengineering map, prepared by ETC Group and the Heinrich Boell Foundation, sheds light on the worldwide state of geoengineering by showing the scope of research and experimentation. There is no complete record of weather and climate control projects so this map is necessarily partial.

Radical Realism About Climate Change

Last December in Paris, 196 governments agreed on the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But political constraints are causing some to advocate solutions that will do more harm than good.

By Lili Fuhr

Geoengineering is not the only answer

Parties to the CBD need to send a strong message to their climate counterparts to find real solutions that work for ecosystems and people instead of offering quick technofixes.

By Lili Fuhr

Last-ditch climate option or wishful thinking?

PDF (Englisch)

This report summarises the key evidence that must be considered about Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). It looks at the overwhelmingly destructive impacts of existing large-scale bioenergy production and use. It examines the different technologies proposed for BECCS and shows them to be unproven, highly complex and thus failure-prone, and extremely costly.

A change of course - How to build a fair future in a 1.5° world

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In Paris in 2015 governments agreed to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees. The mainstream pathways pin theirhopes to risky and costly technologies. In this joint publication, together with Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) and Misereor, we present alternatives that are possible and necessary for a change of course.

For further information and background on geoengineering and its ecological, economic, social and justice implications please see geoengineeringmonitor.org.

Videos & Podcasts

Lili Fuhr on geoengineering

"Geoengineering should not be on the table for adressing climate change" - input of department head Lili Fuhr on Geoengineering at the Climate Engineering Conference 2017: Critical Global Discussions in Berlin.

Podcast on geoengineering

Can and should the global climate be regulated by technological means, the so called geoengineering? In our first episode of our podcast "Tipping point" our host took off to hear from experts what these approaches mean for the planet’s environment and society.

Read the text version here

For your further reading

Dossier: Biodiversity

Dossier

Synthetic Biology describes a set of new genetic techniques for designing and engineering lifeforms for industrial purposes. So far, there is neither a public debate worth mentioning nor any regulation by law. Our dossier looks at the risks Synthetic Biology poses for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

COP22: Marrakech

The UN climate summit in Marrakech from 7th to 18th November is the crucial next step for operationalizing the Paris Agreement. Many controversial issues are on the agenda such as damages caused by climate change and financing for the poorest countries.

Dossier: New Economy of Nature

How did forests become ‚natural capital‘? Our web dossier illustrates what the concept of the „New Economy of Nature“ stands for and explains nature’s role in the Green Economy and why this approach has been of increased interest to economy and politics recently.

COP21: Paris

After the failed climate summit in Copenhagen 2009, governments of 196 countries meet again at COP 21 in Paris at the end of November to negotiate a globally binding climate agreement. In this ongoing dossier we pick up these and other aspects and complement them with regional analyses from our international offices.