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Fixing the Climate? How Geoengineering Threatens to Undermine the SDGs and Climate Justice

Development volume 62, pages 29–36 (2019)Cite this article

Abstract

Geoengineering—large-scale technological interventions in the Earth’s natural processes and ecosystems promoted to counteract some of the symptoms of climate change—threaten to undermine the achievement of SDGs and climate justice. Both Carbon Dioxide Removal and Solar Radiation Management schemes are bound to exacerbate concomitant socio-ecological and socio-economic global crises, deepen societal dependence on technocratic elites and large-scale technological systems and create new spaces for profit and power for new and old economic elites.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is a vanishingly small amount compared to the approx. 400-–200 GtCO2 that climate-economic models in published 1.5 °C scenarios choose to ‘deploy’ over the course of the century.

  2. 2.

    Dooley and Kartha (2018) estimate that a cumulative 370–480 Gt CO2 in carbon removal could be achieved sustainably, i.e. without jeopardizing food production, habitat and biodiversity, through reforestation and forest ecosystem restoration.

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  1. Heinrich Boell Foundation, Berlin, Germany

    Linda Schneider

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  1. Linda Schneider
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Correspondence to Linda Schneider.

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Schneider, L. Fixing the Climate? How Geoengineering Threatens to Undermine the SDGs and Climate Justice. Development 62, 29–36 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-019-00211-6

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Keywords

  • Carbon Dioxide Removal
  • Solar Radiation Management
  • Climate change
  • Agenda 2030
  • Ecosystems