A paradigm shift? African countries call for the non-use of solar geoengineering at UN Environment Assembly

The 6th United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6), held in February 2024 in Nairobi, will be remembered as one of the first intense international negotiations about the potential role of solar radiation modification (SRM), or solar geoengineering, in addressing the climate crisis. The debate was initiated by Switzerland, which tabled a resolution that would have mandated the UN Environment Programme to establish a scientific expert group to assess information on this speculative suite of technologies that aim at cooling the planet by blocking parts of incoming sunlight.

Yet the very first deliberations on the resolution made it clear that the call for an expert group was controversial and consensus far away. Over the course of ten days, the Swiss submitted revised versions of their draft resolution, only to see these subjected to lengthy additions, deletions, and bracketed reservations by opposing groups of countries. In the end, Switzerland was compelled to withdraw the resolution, in a déjà-vu moment from 2019 when it had proposed a resolution on geoengineering that also failed to reach agreement.

Biermann F, Gupta A (2024) A paradigm shift? African countries call for the non-use of solar geoengineering at UN Environment Assembly. PLOS Clim 3(5): e0000413. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000413

https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000413