Introduction

Geoengineering, or climate engineering, refers to the deliberate and large-scale alteration of the Earth’s natural landscape in an effort to counter climate change. It includes the removal of carbon dioxide and solar radiation management (SRM), which reduces greenhouse gases and reflects sunlight to cool the planet. Although geoengineering might be a viable solution to global warming problems, it raises severe moral questions, especially for the Global South.

Due to their lack of finances and infrastructure, the Global South, which consists of developing countries, is more prone to the effects of climate change. As for geoengineering technologies, the implementation of these technologies could worsen inequality by changing the overall weather patterns of a region and its agricultural productivity. For example, SRM might change the amount of rainfall a region receives, and this might adversely impact agriculture in the weaker regions.

The moral issues do not stop there. There are questions about who has the authority to govern this decision. The Global South doesn’t have a real voice on this matter, but it will surely feel the repercussions of SRM policies. Thus, these people are asking for the matter to be discussed globally so that the outcome is suitable for all.

Technological Interventions and Their Implications

Geoengineering interventions have the capacity to alleviate some of the most troubling repercussions concerning global warming. These systematic and large-scale attempts make use of technology to intervene in the climate. Such intervention is classified into a multitude of categories, and each of these categories has unique complications for the Global South.

Geoengineering Interventions Types

Solar Radiation Modification (SRM): This approach attempts to reflect sunlight back into space to subsequently cool the Earth. Techniques encompass stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) as well as marine cloud brightening (MCB). As noted in prior citations, SRM appears to have the ability to reduce global temperatures but places severe environmental threats because of its multi-faceted effects at various latitudes and seasons (Wikipedia, n.d.). 

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR): This approach aims to address the removal of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through methods such as fossil fuel power plants with carbon capture and storage, soil carbon sequestration, and other methods such as afforestation/reforestation and direct air capture. (Wikipedia, n.d.) While CDR is vital towards longitudinal moderation of climate change, its affordability and scalability are major issues.

Cloud Seeding: This technology entails the use of particular chemicals into the clouds to bolster precipitation. Often this is highly effective in areas suffering from drought (Jacobo, Manzo & Zee, 2023). While cloud seeding is helpful in increasing snowpack and eliminating droughts, there is a…

Repercussions for the Global South

The Global South will be greatly impacted by the advances regarding geoengineering, both in a good way and a bad way:

Positive Implications:

Alleviation: Geoengineering interventions can offer immediate alleviation to developing nations suffering from devastating weather conditions like droughts and heat waves(Jacobo, Manzo, & Zee, 2023).

Economic Opportunity: Economic infrastructure as well as agricultural productivity in vulnerable regions can be protected, which, in turn, saves us from the disasters caused by climate change due to geoengineering.

Negative Implications:

Sustainability Issues: Large-scale geoengineering can have drastic discontinuation of precipitation conditions and depletion of the ozone layer, which can have greatly impaired environmental ramifications (Wikipedia, n.d.).

Equity and Justice: Global South can unfairly bear the consequences for geoengineering without having accurate insight in the decision-making forums and not grabbing the opportunities that is provided for them. Such processes are exclusionary and unjust and undemocratic at the same time. (CIEL, 2024).

Technological Reluctance: Reliance on geoengineering alone can distract us from taking the much needed actions of reducing greenhouse gas emissions for long term sustainability (CIEL, 2024).

Ethical Considerations

The ethical dilemmas related to geoengineering in the Global South are complex and require thorough understanding.

Inclusivity and Governance: There is less reason to believe that geoengineering governance is effective in supervising the Global South without a stronger commitment to engage the affected peoples (Kakungulu, 2024)2.

Risk Assessment: There has to be geoengineering counterpart initiatives that focus on the reduction of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emissions, which is an aid to mitigate impacts of climate change (AMS, 2024).

Alternatives to Geoengineering: Climate engineering is politically and practically difficult and very risky even when there are purported rules that govern its usage. As such, focus must remain on sustainable development as the primary method of attaining these goals of mitigating emissions (CIEL, 2024).

To summarize, geoengineering posits exciting possibilities for alleviating climate issues in the short run. However, its consequences on the Global South are nuanced and need a lot of attention. Global South requires guided action which enables them to engage with the world on their own terms. Hence, defining basic ethical principles and participatory means of decision making framework is important where these aims of climate change mitigation are incorporated.

Power Asymmetries in Climate Governance

The integration of climate geoengineering into climate governance raises significant concerns regarding power asymmetries that shape both the discourses and potential outcomes of these technologies. Geoengineering, especially techniques like stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), has been promoted as a potential solution to global warming. However, the assumptions embedded in climate modelling practices, particularly regarding justice, often obscure the deep inequalities that underlie the deployment of such technologies (Reynolds, 2019). The dominant models of climate geoengineering tend to focus on distributional justice, emphasising the aggregate benefits and harms of inventions, typically in terms of global temperature reduction or risk mitigation. 

This narrow focus ignores critical issues of procedural justice, recognition justice, and corrective justice, thus failing to address how these technologies disproportionately affect marginalised populations. In particular, these geoengineering proposals often overlook the structural inequalities in global political and economic systems, wherein poorer nations in the global South, who are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, bear the brunt of environmental and social injustices, Meanwhile, wealthier nations in the global North, which have historically contributed to most greenhouse gas emissions, may continue to benefit from solutions like SAI, while delaying necessary transitions to clean energy (Pezzoli et al., 2023).  

This is problematic, as it risks perpetuating the status quo of energy exploitation and fossil fuel dependency, reinforcing power asymmetries that already exist in climate governance. For instance, SAI might be framed as an easy fix for global warming, thereby deterring or delaying the urgent need for mitigation efforts such as transitioning away from fossil fuels. In doing so, it may also provide a moral hazard, allowing wealthy nations and industries to continue profiting from carbon-intensive practices while shifting the burden of geoengineering risks onto vulnerable questions of justice, as power asymmetries would imply continued holding of industrial power by wealthier nations (Morrison et al., 2022). 

This dynamic deepens the divide between the Global North and South. Moreover, the models and assumptions underlying climate geoengineering often stem from Western liberal conceptions of justice which focus on individual rights and consequentialist reasoning rather than more collective or relational approaches that consider historical wrongs, vulnerability and inter-generation justice. Therefore the discourse surrounding geoengineering must be critically examined, questioning not only the technological efficacy of such interventions but also their broader social and ethical implications (McLaren, 2018).

To mitigate the power imbalances, climate research and policy-making must adopt a more inclusive, pluralistic approach to justice that incorporates diverse perspectives, particularly from those most vulnerable to climate change. This would require moving beyond simplistic models of benefit distribution and toward a more holistic understanding of justice that addresses the structural inequalities embedded within the global governance system and ensures that climate geoengineering does not exacerbate existing inequalities. 

Environmental and Social Justice Concerns

Environmental justice demands a fair distribution of both environmental benefits and burdens, a principle fundamentally challenged by geoengineering’s inherent traits (Bullard, 2018). Social justice, in its broader scope, insists on equity and fairness across society, directly confronting the systemic inequalities that are deeply ingrained within the Global South. Geoengineering cannot be regarded as the technique that is morally neutral since its possible use raises important issues regarding who gains from it, who is at risk, and who eventually controls these potent technologies. A geoengineered world would provide a particularly severe set of environmental and social justice issues for the Global South, which has endured the past and present injustices of colonialism and neo-imperialism (Bond, 2018).

Possibility of Harmful and Unequal Risk Allocation

The idea that there are worldwide advantages to geoengineering frequently shields the harsh reality of potentially unfair and unequal risk allocation. Although the theory proposes a worldwide cooling effect, this conceals the very real potential for non-consequential and harmful regional side effects, to which the worldwide South is disproportionately affected (Cafaro et al., 2017). The very idea that such actions are the ‘fix’ could be a risky distraction, drawing attention away from the deep need to address the underlying causes of climate change and the systemic injustices that remain underlined with environmental injustice, (Büscher and Fletcher, 2017). The Global South, having contributed least to the climate crisis, is positioned to bear the loss which is not from the problem made for itself, but of potentially risky and inequitable technological solutions imposed by the Global North (Büscher et al., 2016).

Governance frameworks that are geoengineered run the risk of maintaining current power disparities worldwide. According to Baker’s (2023) Nature Index report, there is a clear research gap between the North and the South, with cooperation favoring the Global North. Climate governance is directly affected by this inequality since the choices regarding large scale geoengineering technologies run the risk of being controlled by the Global North, oppressing the voices of the Global South (Baker, 2023). 

Exacerbating Pre-existing Vulnerabilities from colonial legacies

Interventions like geoengineering are not neutral technologies that function in a vacuum. They are placed in a world that has already been deeply impacted by past and present injustices. This implies that geoengineering runs the risk of escalating a complicated network of pre-existing vulnerabilities in the Global South that have their roots in colonialism, neo-liberal economic systems, and enduring social injustices. Indigenous perspectives and knowledge are crucial for creating genuinely sustainable and equitable solutions. However, the top-down, technological approach of geoengineering poses a potential to further marginalize this knowledge and exacerbate already-existing vulnerabilities. Large-scale technological interventions could upset traditional livelihoods, weaken community resilience, and eventually perpetuate neo-colonial patterns of extraction and dominance if they are imposed without true co-design and the consideration of local problems and challenges. Framing geoengineering as the so-called ‘climate fix’ runs the risk of reproducing colonial-era strategies that ignored local needs, values, and self-determination in favor of imposing external solutions on the Global South (Besen, 2023).

The climate fix myth and the sustained existence of injustices presents itself as a technological solution. Geoengineering creates the appealing yet dangerous illusion of a quick fix for a persistent and systemic global issue. The prevailing discourse around geoengineering conveniently hides the urgent need for fundamental changes in political economy, consumption habits, and global power dynamics by focusing exclusively on technological interventions. Instead of focusing on systemic change, this emphasis on technological solutions runs the risk of sustaining environmental injustice while undermining efforts to find more sustainable and equitable solutions to the climate crisis. The concepts of equality, decolonization, and a fundamental rethinking of the interactions between people and the natural world ought to form the foundation of these answers. This focus on technological fixes rather than addressing the root causes of climate change could potentially deflect attention from the necessary adjustments to unsustainable social and economic structures. (Rodríguez-Labajos et al., 2019).

Generational Injustice and the Burden of Future Generations

The ethical considerations surrounding geoengineering extend beyond immediate concerns, raising profound questions about justice across generations. The long-term and perhaps irreversible effects of these technologies are still unknown, despite proponents’ emphasis on how geoengineering might mitigate urgent climate impacts. The possibility of potentially undergoing yet another intervention with unclear long-term effects, supposedly for the benefit of future generations, is especially concerning for the Global South, communities already burdened by a long history of exploitation and marginalization. This brings up important moral concerns about imposing the possible effects of today’s technologies on future generations. A ‘Whole Earth’ vision in the system of voluntary stagnant growth for some nations, in contrast to this shortsighted approach for the same nations, places a higher priority on the long-term well-being of both human and non-human life, considering short-term economic rewards. In its current form, geoengineering runs the risk of putting these temporary, restricted technological solutions ahead of a sincere and long-term commitment to integrated fairness and a truly just and sustainable future for everybody (Büscher et al., 2016).

Geoengineering is more closely linked to historical injustice, power dynamics, and global inequality than it is a neutral technological answer. Given that geoengineering could exacerbate pre-existing vulnerabilities and strengthen neo-colonial control, blocking efforts to discover genuinely equitable and sustainable climate solutions, the ethical costs are especially severe for the Global South. This calls for a major reorientation of the geoengineering discussion. This means prioritizing the voices and perspectives of the Global South, demanding really revolutionary solutions to the climate problem rather than just technological ones, and prioritizing justice and fairness over technological expediency.

Economic and Policy Challenges for the Global South

Geoengineering, particularly solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), is increasingly debated as a solution to climate change. However, the Global South faces ethical, economic, and policy dilemmas in its implementation.

Ethically, geoengineering raises concerns about decision-making authority and potential adverse effects. Wealthy nations, responsible for most historical emissions, control the research and funding for these technologies, sidelining the Global South, which remains most vulnerable to climate change (Horton & Keith, 2021). Unintended consequences, such as disruptions to monsoon patterns and biodiversity loss, disproportionately affect tropical and agrarian economies, exacerbating existing inequalities (Robock, 2020).

Economically, geoengineering presents a paradox for developing nations. While climate-induced disasters threaten economic stability, geoengineering projects demand significant investment and technical expertise that many Global South nations lack. Funding mechanisms remain unclear, with fears that mitigation and adaptation funds may be diverted to geoengineering initiatives, sidelining pressing local priorities like sustainable development and poverty reduction (Hulme, 2014).

From a policy perspective, governance frameworks for geoengineering remain underdeveloped. The absence of global regulatory mechanisms means that wealthier nations or private entities could unilaterally deploy technologies, leaving vulnerable nations with no say in decisions that impact them (Reynolds, 2019). Furthermore, legal liabilities for unintended cross-border effects remain unresolved. Without inclusive global governance, geoengineering could reinforce geopolitical imbalances rather than offering equitable climate solutions.

In conclusion, while geoengineering may offer climate relief, its ethical, economic, and policy challenges disproportionately burden the Global South. Without inclusive governance, financial support, and risk assessment, these technologies risk exacerbating existing global inequities rather than resolving them.

Conclusion

In conclusion, geoengineering offers potential solutions to climate change but raises significant ethical concerns for the Global South. These regions, already vulnerable to climate impacts, risk being further marginalized by unequal decision-making and unintended consequences, without inclusive governance and consent, geoengineering could end up deepening existing inequalities. It’s therefore crucial to prioritise equity and local perspectives in any climate intervention, ethical, transparent policies are necessary to avoid repeating historical patterns of exploitation. 

References

AMS. (2024). Climate Intervention. American Meteorological Society. https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/about-ams/ams-statements/statements-of-the-ams-in-force/climate-intervention/

Baker, S. (2023). North–south publishing data show stark inequities in global research. Nature, 624(7991), S1–S1. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03901-x

Besen, P. (2023). Co-designing collective housing for a regenerative future: Lessons from Indigenous communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and South America. Link Symposium. https://doi.org/10.24135/link2022.v4i1.199

Bond, P. (2018). Ecological-Economic Narratives for Resisting Extractive Industries in Africa. Research in Political Economy, 73–110. https://doi.org/10.1108/s0161-723020180000033004

Bram, B., & Fletcher, R. (2017, February 2). The Trump moment in environmental conservation (entitlecollective, Ed.). ENTITLE Blog – a Collaborative Writing Project on Political Ecology. https://entitleblogdotorg3.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/the-trump-moment-in-environmental-conservation/

Bullard, R. D. (2018). Dumping in Dixie. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429495274

Büscher, B., Fletcher, R., Brockington, D., Sandbrook, C., Adams, W. M., Campbell, L., Corson, C., Dressler, W., Duffy, R., Gray, N., Holmes, G., Kelly, A., Lunstrum, E., Ramutsindela, M., & Shanker, K. (2016). Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical ideas for conservation, and their implications. Oryx, 51(3), 407–410. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0030605316001228

Cafaro, P., Butler, T., Crist, E., Cryer, P., Dinerstein, E., Kopnina, H., Noss, R., Piccolo, J., Taylor, B., Vynne, C., & Washington, H. (2017). If we want a whole Earth, Nature Needs Half: a response to Büscher et al. Oryx, 51(3), 400–400. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0030605317000072

CIEL. (2024). Why Geoengineering is a False Solution to the Climate Crisis. Center for International Environmental Law. https://www.ciel.org/why-geoengineering-is-a-false-solution-to-the-climate-crisis/

Horton, J. B., & Keith, D. W. (2021). Solar geoengineering and the science-policy interface. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(45), e2101904118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101904118

Hulme, M. (2014). Can science fix climate change? A case against climate engineering. Polity Press. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Can+Science+Fix+Climate+Change%3F%3A+A+Case+Against+Climate+Engineering-p-9780745685251

Jacobo, J., Manzo, D., & Zee, G. (2023, April 21). These geoengineering technologies could help combat the climate crisis, scientists say. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/US/geoengineering-technologies-combat-climate-crisis-scientists/story?id=98476205

McLaren, D. (2018). Whose climate, and whose ethics? Conceptions of justice in solar Geoengineering Modelling. Elsevier, 44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.05.021 

Morrison, T. H., Adger, W. N., Agrawal, A., Brown, K., Hornsey, M. J., Hughes, T. P., Jain, M., Lemos, M. C., McHugh, L. H., O’Neill, S., & Van Berkel, D. (2022). Radical interventions for climate-impacted systems. Nature Climate Change, 12(12), 1100–1106. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01542-y 

Pezzoli, P., Emmerling, J., & Tavoni, M. (2023). SRM on the table: the role of geoengineering for the stability and effectiveness of climate coalitions. Climatic Change, 176(10). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03604-2 

Reynolds, J. L. (2019). Solar geoengineering to reduce climate change: a review of governance proposals. Proceedings of the Royal Society a Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences, 475(2229), 20190255. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2019.0255 

Reynolds, J. L. (2019). The governance of solar geoengineering: Managing climate change in the Anthropocene. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316676790

Robock, A. (2020). The benefits, risks, and costs of stratospheric geoengineering. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 45(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-012420-050950

Rodríguez-Labajos, B., Yánez, I., Bond, P., Greyl, L., Munguti, S., Ojo, G. U., & Overbeek, W. (2019). Not So Natural an Alliance? Degrowth and Environmental Justice Movements in the Global South. Ecological Economics, 157, 175–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.11.007

WEF. (2024, October 24). Making climate geoengineering more inclusive and ethical. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/10/geoengineering-building-ethics-transparency-inclusion-climate-research/

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Climate engineering. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering