False Solutions and Feminist Climate Justice: Why Geoengineering is no solution for the climate emergency

Whether land-based “carbon removals”, vast-scale marine manipulation, or solar geoengineering — planetary-scale and intergenerational technological interventions that are inherently unpredictable and risk further destabilising an already destabilised climate, these speculative techno-fixes mask the symptoms of climate change while leaving fossil fuel power untouched.

Geoengineering entrenches injustice. Risks fall on “sacrifice zones” and the Global South while profits flow to Northern elites. Solar geoengineering is entangled with militarism and geopolitical conflict. Despite existing precautionary rules — the CBD moratorium, UNCLOS, the ICJ Advisory Opinion — carbon markets now open UNFCCC doors to these schemes. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are also increasingly referenced in countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the Global Stocktake.

For WGC, the stakes are sharpest here. Geoengineering reflects a patriarchal logic of controlling nature. Women, gender diverse people, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities — most dependent on land, water, and food systems, voices least heard in decisions — bear the brunt through land grabs, displacement, and gender-based violence when they resist.

WGC’s demands are clear: uphold the precautionary principle and the CBD moratorium, establish a non-use agreement on solar geoengineering, ban outdoor marine and solar experiments, halt land-based schemes, defund geoengineering, and finance community-led, gender-just solutions instead.

Techno-fix cannot be the way out of a crisis rooted in unequal power. The answer is a sustainable, just and feminist transformation — not dimming the sun.

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