ABC Live Editorial Note: The Peepal supports ABC Live with research-led environmental and sustainability analysis.
However, ABC Live retains full editorial responsibility for this report.
New Delhi (ABC Live): In simple terms, geoengineering means deliberate human intervention in the Earth’s climate or weather system.
For example, it includes Solar Radiation Management (SRM), Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB), and cloud seeding.
At first glance, these technologies may look useful because they may cool the planet temporarily, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or increase rainfall in drought-hit areas.
However, geoengineering is entering a world already shaped by mistrust, wars, water stress, great-power rivalry, and weak global institutions.
Therefore, climate technology may not remain a neutral scientific tool.
Instead, in a chaotic international order, it may become a tool of strategic power, climate suspicion, and global inequality.
Consequently, the central concern is clear: geoengineering is advancing faster than global trust, global law, and global governance.
First, geoengineering promises climate relief.
However, it also creates serious risks for law, security, and justice.
Therefore, readers should understand the issue through both science and governance.
Thus, the debate must not be reduced to science alone.
Instead, it must also address law, equity, security, and public consent.
Why ABC Live Is Publishing This Report Now At present, geoengineering is no longer only a scientific debate.
Instead, it has become a question of climate justice, national security, water security, food security, and global power politics.
Meanwhile, climate change is worsening.
At the same time, international cooperation is weakening.
As a result, some states may view geoengineering as a future emergency tool.
However, other states may view the same technology as a strategic threat.
Moreover, the world has not yet decided who will approve climate intervention.
In addition, it has not settled who will verify climate effects.
Similarly, there is no clear global answer on compensation if one country’s action harms another country.
Consequently, geoengineering governance has become an urgent public-interest issue.
Therefore, ABC Live is analysing this issue now because the world may soon face a hard question: who gets to decide how the planet’s climate is modified? What Has Happened? Earlier, researchers discussed geoengineering mainly as a possible scientific response to climate change.
Now, however, governments, climate institutions, and security experts are also examining its strategic consequences.
For instance, food insecurity, water scarcity, migration pressure, and resource competition are no longer only environmental concerns.
Instead, these pressures are reshaping international relations.
Against this background, deliberate climate intervention may attract political, military, and economic attention.
In addition, weather modification is no longer purely theoretical because cloud seeding is already used in several countries.
Although large-scale solar geoengineering remains contested, the policy debate has already begun.
Therefore, the world is facing a timing problem: climate risks are rising, but global institutions remain too weak to regulate planetary-scale intervention.
What Is Geoengineering? Broadly, geoengineering covers several methods that aim to alter climate or weather conditions.
Rather than one technology, it includes different tools with different risks.
However, all these methods raise one common question: who controls climate intervention, and who bears the consequences? Major Forms of Geoengineering The table below explains the main technologies.
However, each technology also creates a governance risk.
Therefore, geoengineering should not be discussed as a simple technical shortcut.
Instead, it must be treated as a high-risk governance challenge.
Legal and Policy Background Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) Legally, the main international treaty relevant to hostile environmental modification is the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD).
In simple words, this convention restricts military or hostile use of environmental modification techniques when their effects are widespread, long-lasting, or severe.
Therefore, it recognises that the environment must not become a weapon.
However, the treaty does not provide a complete modern rulebook for peaceful geoengineering research.
Moreover, it does not fully answer questions on civilian climate intervention, emergency deployment, liability, cross-border harm, or public consent.
Because of this limitation, geoengineering governance still has a major legal gap.
Consequently, while hostile environmental manipulation is restricted, peaceful or emergency climate intervention remains under-governed.
Governance Gap: Questions the World Has Not Answered Without credible international governance, geoengineering may deepen mistrust.
Moreover, it may encourage unilateral intervention.
As a result, climate technology may create new forms of coercive climate leverage.
Therefore, governance must come before deployment.
Otherwise, the world may face planetary action first and legal accountability later.
Data and Evidence Importantly, geoengineering governance is becoming urgent because climate technology is advancing faster than global rules.
Although some methods remain theoretical, others are already being tested or used in limited forms.
Therefore, the issue is not only scientific.
Instead, it is also legal, diplomatic, and strategic.
Moreover, in a divided world, even a limited climate experiment may create political suspicion.
Geoengineering Technology Dashboard The dashboard below shows why geoengineering cannot be treated as one simple category.
Instead, each method needs separate legal, scientific, and diplomatic scrutiny.
As a result, one common rule will not be enough.
Instead, the world needs a layered governance model.
Global Governance Status At present, the global framework remains incomplete.
Therefore, powerful states may move faster than international law.
Consequently, the biggest danger is not only scientific uncertainty.
Rather, it is the absence of enforceable consent, verification, and liability systems.
Scientific Risk Dashboard Scientifically, uncertainty remains serious.
Therefore, geoengineering cannot be deployed safely without long-term assessment and public oversight.
Thus, geoengineering may reduce one set of risks while creating another.
Consequently, governance must examine both benefits and harms.
Geoengineering and International Chaos The table below explains how global disorder affects geoengineering governance.
Moreover, it shows why climate technology cannot be separated from geopolitical rivalry.
Taken together, this data shows that geoengineering governance cannot be separated from geopolitics.
Although climate intervention may look scientific in design, rival states may still interpret it as strategic behaviour.
Therefore, strong rules are needed before mistrust becomes crisis.
How a Chaotic World Is Damaging Geoengineering 1.
It Turns Climate Science Into Security Suspicion In a stable world, countries may treat geoengineering research as climate science.
In a chaotic world, however, they may treat it as national security activity.
For example, if one country uses cloud seeding and another country faces drought, the affected country may suspect rainfall manipulation.
Similarly, if a major power develops solar geoengineering capacity, rivals may fear that it can influence monsoons, storms, or agricultural cycles.
Even when scientific proof is weak, political suspicion may grow.
As a result, climate research may become a security dispute.
Therefore, geoengineering governance becomes harder in a divided world.
It Weakens Global Consent Because geoengineering may affect everyone, it cannot be governed like an ordinary domestic technology.
Therefore, global consent becomes central.
A country may conduct an experiment inside its own territory.
Yet atmospheric effects may cross borders.
As a result, consent becomes a serious problem.
One state may argue that it is acting for climate protection.
However, another state may fear harm to rainfall, crops, rivers, or disaster patterns.
Consequently, without global consent, geoengineering may become a form of climate unilateralism.
It Creates Climate Inequality Rich countries have more money, better laboratories, stronger satellites, and greater diplomatic power.
Consequently, they may dominate geoengineering research and decision-making.
Poorer countries, especially in the Global South, may face the highest climate risks.
Yet they may have the weakest role in climate intervention governance.
Therefore, the issue raises a serious justice problem.
In practice, vulnerable states may become passive recipients of decisions made elsewhere.
As a result, decisions taken in powerful capitals may reshape agriculture, water security, and weather patterns in weaker regions without real consent.
It Encourages Technological Shortcuts Because geoengineering may create a false sense of safety,....
