Non-Use Agreement

On 17 January 2022, more than 60 senior climate scientists and governance scholars from around the world launched a global initiative calling for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering. 
More than five hundred scholars now support the call for a Non-Use Agreement.

Solar geoengineering deployment cannot be fairly governed globally and poses unacceptable risk if implemented as a future climate policy option. 

We call on fellow academics, civil society organizations and concerned individuals to sign our open letter to governments, the United Nations and other actors to stop development and potential use of planetary-scale solar geoengineering technologies. 

Our initiative mobilizes especially against the most widely debated speculative technology: the massive spraying of aerosols in the stratosphere to block a part of incoming sunlight to cool the planet. Such dangerous planetary-scale interventions cannot be governed in a globally inclusive, fair and effective manner and must be banned. 

Therefore, we call for an International Non-use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering 

An International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering would be timely, feasible, and effective. It would inhibit further normalization and development of a risky and poorly understood set of technologies.

An International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering must include at least five core measures and commitments:

A call for 5 core commitments and measures
1No public funding
The commitment to prohibit national funding agencies from supporting the development of technologies for solar geoengineering, domestically and through international institutions.
2No outdoor experiments
The commitment to ban outdoor experiments of solar geoengineering technologies.
3No patents
The commitment to not grant patent rights for technologies for solar geoengineering, including supporting technologies such as for the retrofitting of airplanes for aerosol injections.
4No deployment
The commitment to not deploy technologies for solar geoengineering if developed by third parties.
5No support in international institutions
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Non-Use Agreement

Sign the Open Letter

The proposed non-use agreement is described in more detail in an academic perspective article in WIREs Climate Change, co-authored by 16 scientists and initiators of this call.