Dear friends,
The past couple of months have seen the world sink further into seemingly endless and intersecting crises, with war, economic upheaval, and climate breakdown promising to fundamentally change our lives and politics for years to come. At the same time, and in many ways as a direct consequence, funding for solar geoengineering is ramping up, with last year seeing a huge jump in both public and private finance.
Through our publications over the past few months, we’ve tried to examine geoengineering in this broader global context, where international law and cooperation on global crises is unravelling, the law of the strongest is returning, and authoritarianism, nationalism and imperialism are trumping consideration of human rights and global justice.
We’ve taken an in-depth look at all of the most recent developments in solar geoengineering, with our four-part series covering the wider trends in solar geoengineering research, as well as shining a light on the projects and companies that are leading developments taking place, from the Earth’s surface to outer space:
- Geoengineering the Earth’s Surface: Developments in making our planet more reflective
- Geoengineering the clouds: Solar radiation management in the lower atmosphere
- Geoengineering the stratosphere: Funding for high-altitude geoengineering research is increasing massively
- Geoengineering from space: the final frontier for planetary-scale climate manipulation?
We’ve also published a powerful guest article by Mohammed Usrof, Executive Director of the Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy, which focuses on the US-Israeli for-profit start-up Stardust Solutions, its deep military links, and the fact that it recently completed the largest ever private funding round for solar geoengineering. Drawing a parallel with Gaza, the article shows how systems of harm can become normalised through administration, contracts, and “risk management”, especially when accountability depends on powerful actors:
We’ve also supported the publication of two important new briefings by key allies. One is a comprehensive assessment of the solar geoengineering funding landscape over the past five years, which shows that the overwhelming majority of funding originates in the Global North, and that most private funders have strong ties to the tech sector:
- Who Funds and Who Pays: The funding of solar geoengineering, 2020–2025, by Jared Sanborn, PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Utah, and J. P. Sapinski, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Université de Moncton, Canada, published by Heinrich Böll Foundation.
The other zeroes in on the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), a ‘high risk-high reward’ agency funded by the UK Government, which began bankrolling outdoor solar geoengineering experiments last year when it announced the largest-ever government research program on solar geoengineering, including five research projects that plan to conduct outdoor experiments. According to ETC Group, “the ‘deeptech’ ‘solutions’ that ARIA is set up to fast-forward…have the potential to undermine human rights and the integrity of ecosystems, and may even potentially…accelerate the breach of planetary boundaries”:
- ARIA: The UK’s dubious ‘deep tech’ agency, published by ETC Group
If you missed our webinar with the HOME Alliance and Heinrich Böll Foundation on 26th March that drew all of these elements and publications together, you can watch the full recording here:
Finally, for a fantastic introductory briefing on solar geoengineering with information about key players and projects and links to further reading, please see the HOME Alliance’s solar geoengineering toolkit.
Before you go, we have two things to ask of you: please forward this newsletter to a colleague or friend, and make sure to follow Geoengineering Monitor and HOME Alliance on socials to stay up to date and stay in touch with us.
