Dear colleague
I’m writing to you as a sympathetic colleague and fellow traveller in the sustainability, technology and equity field about an important initiative I’ve been helping to lead. I hope you will agree – and might be interested in supporting it in one of the ways outlined below.
With more than 60 senior climate scientists and governance scholars from around the world, we launched a global initiative yesterday calling for an International Non-use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering.
We argue that planetary-scale solar geoengineering deployment cannot be governed fairly and poses unacceptable risks and uncertainties, including to lives and livelihoods in the Global South, if included as a future climate policy option. We are also deeply concerned about the risks that solar geoengineering development may pose to climate policy and decarbonization commitments. There are major incompatibilities between solar geoengineering and climate justice.
We are now calling on fellow academics, civil society organizations and concerned individuals to sign an open letter to governments, the United Nations and other actors to stop development and the potential use of planetary scale geoengineering technologies.
This initiative draws on an article published in WIREs Climate Change, which is co-authored by the 16 initiators of this initiative. Co-authors include, besides myself, prof. Frank Biermann (Utrecht University, Dr. Jeroen Oomen, (Utrecht University), prof. Aarti Gupta (Wageningen University), prof. Saleem H. Ali (University of Delaware), prof. Ken Conca (American University), prof. Maarten A. Hajer (Utrecht University), prof. Prakash Kashwan (University of Connecticut), prof. Louis J. Kotzé (North-West University), prof. Dirk Messner (German Environment Agency), prof. Chukwumerije Okereke (Alex-Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike), prof. Åsa Persson (Stockholm Environment Institute), prof. Janez Potocnik (International Resource Panel, United Nations Environment Programme), prof. David Schlosberg (Sydney Environment Institute), prof. Michelle Scobie (The University of the West Indies), prof. Stacy D. VandeVeer (University of Massachusetts Boston).
First signatories include prof. Mike Hulme, prof. Sheila Jasanoff, prof. Stefan Rahmstorf, prof. Jennie C. Stephens, prof. Arturo Escobar, prof. Hiroshi Ohta, prof. Patricia Kameri-Mbote, prof. Wolfgang Kramer, prof. Raymond Pierrehumbert, prof. Karen O’Brien, as well as the novelist Dr. Amitav Ghosh.
We would be very grateful if you would support us by circulating this initiative widely within your networks. Additionally, we hope you will consider signing up as a Signatory on our website www.solargeoeng.org, and to encourage your academic colleagues to do the same.
Finally, please also sign and share with your civil society networks, friends and family and all concerned citizens the change.org petition calling for an International Non-Use Agreement for Solar Geoengineering here: https://www.change.org/SolarGeoengNon-Use
If you wish to contribute your time, please contact Carol Bardi (c.costadesouza@uu.nl)
You can follow the progress on this on initiative on twitter: @solargeoeng
Thank you very much for your support,
Warmest wishes
Melissa
Professor Melissa Leach CBE FBA
Director
Institute of Development Studies
