Beyond Ocean Fertilization: The CBD Moratorium on Geoengineering

After last week's post on the recent UN report on ocean fertilization, I came across an interesting post on the blog Resilience Science that does a great job of contrasting two points of view about the potential effectiveness of a recent moratorium on geoengineering (see A Moratorium on Geoengineering? Really?). Effectiveness in this case is the likelihood of this moratorium actually controlling the implementation of large-scale geoengineering experiments or projects at the international scale.

The participants in the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) included this moratorium in their October 2010 agreement to protect biodiversity (the CBD previously called for a ban on ocean fertilization in 2008). The post has lots of useful links to background information on the CBD, other reports on geoengineering (pro and con), as well as general material about the potential role for geoengineering in combating global warming.

cheers.