Solutions such as geoengineering, carbon trade markets, and several greenwashing activities proposed in the international fora, mandated to safeguard life, have not been able to halt the rise of our planet’s temperature. They keep worsening the situation and leave decision-makers in impunity for lack of real action and threatening all life on earth.
The International Rights of Nature Tribunal has addressed these so-called false solutions in its previous hearings in Quito, Lima, Paris, Bonn, and Glasgow. False solutions were then defined as “solutions which pretend to address the key issues while in reality only perpetuating this unsustainable status quo, and even worse, “solutions” that may affect and violate even more of Nature’s Rights.” Immediate effects such as temperature rise, ocean rise, changes in seasons, intensification of weather conditions, and others have been testified during those sessions, showing the inadequacy and inefficacy of those so-called solutions. Witnesses have made cases calling out the dangers of geoengineering, ocean iron fertilization, carbon capture and storage (CCS), bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), solar radiation management, carbon offsets, carbon pricing, net zero emissions, nature-based solutions, and fracking.
The last COP of the UNFCCC in Dubai is illustrative of the ongoing lack of serious commitment the international community shows to credibly tackling carbon emissions. The interests of the fossil fuel industry are safeguarded, and further “climate bomb” projects are planned and allowed because of the false solutions held up in the place of keeping fossil fuels in the ground (Damian Carrington and Matthew Taylor, the Guardian). The critical importance of rejecting false solutions to climate change is urgent as the UNFCCC aims to finalize the new global carbon markets of the Paris Agreement Article 6 at the next COP 29 in November in Azerbaijan, while the UNCBD works to implement biodiversity offsets and credits from within the Global Biodiversity Framework in October in Colombia. All strategies, and “green rhetorics” are permitted to cover this truth up and to avoid the necessary path of phasing out fossil fuels, degrowing our economies, upholding the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and building a more harmonious cohabitation of our human societies with other living beings and ecosystems of Nature and their rights.
