As African heads of state travel to Dakar for the African Development Bank Group’s Dakar 2 African Food Summit, 83 African and international civil society organisations have signed a collective statement opposing the summit’s “climate smart agriculture” approach.

Mexico City, Mexico – On Friday January 13 the Mexican government announced that it will not allow solar geoengineering experiments in Mexico. This announcement came in response to Make Sunsets’ experiments over Baja California Sur, Mexico, where the two-man startup used weather balloons to spray sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. This took place without the Free Prior and Informed consent of the Indigenous peoples whose territories were used for the experiments and without any permits or even a license to operate a business in Mexico.

Photo credit: Marcus Woodbridge

Mexico City, Mexico – A longtime watchdog on geoengineering activities, ETC Group is sounding the alarm on two recent solar geoengineering tests that have released sulfur dioxide over Baja California Sur, Mexico as part of an experiment to block the sun’s warmth from reaching the earth.  A two-man start-up from the United States, calling itself Make Sunsets, is behind these tests and appears to be seeking to profit from the climate crisis.

Two years late – and supersized beyond any previous CBD meeting – COP 15 was always going to be a complex multidimensional chess battle. Once all sides met in Montreal’s enormous Palais des congrès, an army of corporate and philanthrocapitalist lobbyists and big delegations from biotech-friendly governments used their superior numbers to drown out (and often literally edit out) long-standing principles of precaution and justice.

COP15: An interview with Sabrina Masinjila

by Zahra Moloo

(Click on the link below to listen to the interview.)

MONTREAL/TIOHTIÀ:KE/UNCEDED TERRITORY OF THE KANIEN’KEHÁ:KA NATION – Climber-activists today dropped 80-foot banners reading, “Biodiversity versus Billionaires,” visible from Montreal’s Palais des Congres where world leaders are meeting at the UN’s landmark Biodiversity COP15.

December 12, 2022, Montreal, Canada – Eighty-three national and international organizations from forty countries have released an open letter calling on the parties to the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (CBD) to say no to geoengineering and yes to protecting biodiversity, the environment, the climate, the rights of Indigenous peoples and the human rights of local communities.

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) took a groundbreaking decision by addressing geoengineering and its potential impacts on biodiversity and people early on.

COP15: An interview with Christine von Weizsäcker

by Zahra Moloo

(Click on the link below to listen to the interview.)

As preliminary meetings of the Open-Ended Working Group wrap up and official COP meetings begin, ECOROPA’s Christine von Weizsäcker talks to ETC Group about evaluating new genetic technologies and the rights of indigenous people in the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

TIME: 18.15, Wednesday, December 7 2022
LOCATION: Business and Industry Organizations Meeting Room
Light refreshments will be served

Since its earliest days, the CBD has prioritised the precautionary approach to assess and monitor the impacts of new technologies. In an era of rapid technologically-driven change and ever greater technological power, policymakers need the means to see and prepare for disruptive trends. Come and hear: