Thread: A Response:

There are 200 grassroots organizations, mostly based in the Global South that have signed a manifesto against geoengineering technologies like CDR. These groups are not “quieter” as @OlufemiOTaiwo states and neither are they marginal. https://twitter.com/africasacountry/status/1311028073421135872

I should know this. I coordinate the global campaign: http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/home-new-EN-feb6.pdf

These groups/collectives represent some of the most radical environmental justice groups in the world, have serious critiques of capitalism and completely reject the commodification of nature including techno-fixes like geoengineering technologies.

Many of these groups are in Africa. I know because I’ve spent the last decade+ organizing alongside some of the most radical groups on the continent - which are also part of wider global networks for climate justice.

It’s interesting to see how the article subtly frames critiques of geoengineering as “something done” by Northern climate justice groups, apart from CIEL, the rest of us, are called “quiet”.

In doing so this piece erases whole movements on this continent, the rest of the Global South, AND minimizes the transnational solidarity organizing work that has been going on for decades against the commodification of nature and struggles for climate justice.

This article makes no serious attempt to engage questions of power surrounding geoengineering technologies/techno-fixes ranging from: governance, the geo-politics and power relations within the UN spaces + treaty bodies where most of these negotiations are held...

…do we perhaps imagine that Uganda and USA have the same power at the UN for example?, the politics of patents - intellectual property rights, questions on their safety and reliability (especially because the Global South is largely being targeted for these experiments…

…Indigenous sovereignty, land questions, biodiversity and ecosystems, to name just a few.

Importantly, geoengineering / techno-fixes simply commodifiy nature and don’t address the root causes of the climate crisis. Like GMOs and forest related carbon market schemes (REDD+) – the status quo with regard to the capitalist economic system is allowed to continue…