The only success in Nagoya came through a simple full consensus decision.
And this is the big kill of run away ghoulish geo-engineering.
This kill bill, came at the very last moment, and it was the sweet closure, when the 193-member UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) closed its tenth biennial meeting with a de facto moratorium on geoengineering projects and real life climate engineering experiments.
”From now on, any private or public experimentation or adventurism intended to manipulate the planetary thermostat will be in violation of this carefully crafted UN consensus,” said Rudy Wallace, UN Policy co-ordinator of the Environmental Parliament.
The Moratorium agreement, was reached during the ministerial portion of the two-week meeting which included 110 environment ministers, asks governments to ensure that no geoengineering activities take place until risks to the environment and biodiversity and associated social, cultural and economic impacts have been appropriately considered.
The Nagoya Biodiversity Ministerial was also instructed to report back on various geoengineering proposals and potential intergovernmental regulatory measures, that this kill geoengineering bill covers.
The unusually strong consensus decision builds on the 2008 moratorium on ocean fertilization. That agreement, negotiated at COP9 in Bonn, put the brakes on a litany of failed “experiments” – both public and private – to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide in the oceans’ depths by spreading nutrient rich iron sulphates onto the sea surface and causing devastating algae blooms and red tides.
Since then, idle engineer’s attention, Dr Strangeloves with Nuclear winter climate cooling scenarios and Devil’s hands have turned to a range of futuristic proposals from blocking solar radiation reaching the earth, via large-scale interventions in the atmosphere, stratosphere, troposphere and outer space, that would alter climate, weather, rainfall, winds, global temperatures and precipitation patterns unevenly throughout the earth’s atmosphere and fragile climate.
“This decision clearly places the governance of geoengineering under United Nations supervision, where it clearly belongs,” said ETC Group Executive Director Pat Mooney. “This decision is a victory for common sense, and for precaution.”
This stoppage of Climate Engineering will not inhibit legitimate scientific research, academic and University science, but rather regulate individual Geo piracy and the means and ends of Climate Engineering and promote responsibility amongst member governments.
It would also greatly enhance the focus on the reality of the Moral Hazard, and refocus government’s efforts to redouble their work to reach a Climate Deal in Mexico’s COP16 and beyond in South Africa’s COP17.
All global leaders now stand notified…. Reach a deal or lose your chances to claim leadership and position. Simple as that.
Decisions on geoengineering cannot be made any longer, by small groups of scientists funded by secretive Billionaires, or secret government and international small groups of countries, that establish self-serving ‘voluntary guidelines’ on climate hacking.
I believe that whatever little credibility such efforts may have had in some policy circles in North America and Europe has been shattered by this decision. Now the perpetrators of such Geo engineering crimes will be looking at charges of major Crimes against humanity for doing their silly nuclear bits…
Our home team, and the UK Royal Society and its partners should now also look to cancel their Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative and respect that the world’s governments have collectively decided that future deliberations on geoengineering should take place in the open. Within the UN, or in global fora, where all countries have a seat at the table and where civil society can watch and influence what they are doing….
Delegates in Nagoya have now clearly understood the potential threat that deployment – or even field testing – of geoengineering technologies poses to the protection of biodiversity. The decision was hammered out in long and difficult late night sessions of a “friends of the chair” group, attended by the Environmental Parliament among many others, and adopted by the Working Group One, Plenary on the 27th of October 2010. The Chair of the climate and biodiversity negotiations called the final text a delicate compromise, and shepherded it through in the final plenary of the UN meetings in Nagoya.
The Ministerial UN decision is not perfect, said Horace Bloomberg of Environmental Parliament and all though, some delegations are understandably concerned that the interim definition of geoengineering is too narrow because it does not include major technologies, it will help establish a platform before COP16 and the Mexico talks this year’s end.
And even during the next CBD meeting, there will be ample opportunity to consider these questions in more detail. But climate techno-fixes are now firmly on the UN agenda and will lead to important debates as the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit approaches.
A change of course is essential, to a Low carbon Future but geoengineering is clearly not the way forward.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
No cloud without a silver lining.
Out of the dismall failures of the COP-MOP meetings in Nagoya, comes now a ray of sunshine:
PS2:
The present Geoengineering Moratorium at the UN Biodiversity Ministerial Summit of Nagoya that blocks Risky Climate Techno-fixes and rich fools’ adventurism with our Atmospheric Commons and Climate has been that ray of Sun.
PS3:
On to Mexico and the real work of limiting the global CO2 emissions by changes in our Energy, Power and Utility and Economy towards a Low carbon Future for all Peoples.
The GREEN BONDS MINISTERIAL SUMMIT LONDON 2011 is the way forward to finance that future:
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