“Geoengineering”: the deliberate modification of the earth’s environment by the addition or subtraction of a resource or energy input on a massive scale. Proposed geoengineering projects, often introduced as a means of combating climate change , include sulfur-spraying in the upper atmosphere (solar radiation management), ocean fertilization and carbon capture and storage.” .

NAGOYA, Japan – In a landmark consensus decision, the 193-member UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) closed its tenth biennial meeting on October 29 (2010) with a moratorium on geoengineering projects and experiments. “Any private or public experimentation or intended to manipulate the temperature of the planet will be in violation of this UN consensus,” stated Silvia Ribeiro, Latin American Director of ETC Group, the environmental NGO that has spearheaded the moratorium initiative.

Ribiero pointed out that today’s advocates of geoengineering “solutions” to global warming are the same rich companies, countries and individuals that have been denying climate change until now. Geoengineering initiatives and proposals are coming almost entirely from the USA and the United Kingdom, but the moratorium, says ETC Director Pat Mooney, “clearly places the governance of engineering in the United Nations, where it belongs.”

The agreement 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 decision”. says Mooney, “is a victory for common sense, and for precaution. It will not inhibit legitimate scientific research. Decisions on geoengineering cannot be made by small groups of scientists from a small group of countries that establish self-serving ‘voluntary guidelines’ on climate hacking. What little credibility such efforts may have had in some policy circles in the global North has been shattered by this decision. The UK Royal Society and its partners should 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 UN, where all countries have a seat at the table and where civil society can watch and influence what they are doing.”

Monday, 8th November 2010 is the date for a conference in London organized by the Royal Society entitled “Geoengineering: taking control of our planet’s climate” and it is likely that opposition to its proposals will be coming not only from supporters of the ETC group perspective and of the moratorium but also from oppositionists who believe, on the basis of much circumstantial evidence, that the countries supporting the geoengineering moratorium (which include the UK and all of the European Union but not the USA) are in fact already massively violating the moratorium they have just signed.

Their viewpoint is being reinforced by the appearance in October of a film called “What in the world are they Spraying” directed by Californian journalist and film-maker Mike Murphy, containing devastating evidence of some of the side effects of aerosol spraying from aircraft that appear to be carrying out Solar Radiation Management. But Murphy’s film also puts forward the allegation that aerosol spraying with aluminium oxide may also be serving the purpose of constructing a world where farmers and growers will be obliged to resort to use of Monsanto’s new varieties of genetically modified aluminium resistant seeds.

See the ETC group press conference in Nagoya: Click here