Welcome H.O.M.E!
Hands Off Mother Earth (H.O.M.E) is a global campaign to defend our one precious home, planet earth, against the threat of geoengineering experiments.Join with us to send a clear message to the geoengineers and to governments worldwide that our home is not a laboratory
One Year at HOME: Thousands of People Build a Movement Against Geoengineering
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- photo: Pat Mooney and Silvia Ribeiro from ETC Group, along with Ricardo Navarro of Friends of the Earth and Alberto Gomez from la Via Campesina launch the HOME campaign in April 2010.
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Exactly one year ago, the HOME campaign (www.handsoffmotherearth.org) was launched at the World Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Since then, hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals have joined the campaign, sent in their pictures and helped raise awareness about the dangers of geoengineering experiments.
We have accomplished a great deal in the past year, most importantly a moratorium on geoengineering experiments, adopted at the Convention on Biological Diversity in October 2010. While a major victory, the moratorium is fragile as geoengineers continue to press for their high-risk techno-fixes.
Just this week the United Nations General Assembly held an interactive dialogue in New York on promoting a holistic approach to sustainable development in harmony with Nature, pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 65/164, adopted at the initiative of the government of Bolivia. Two new books have just been released as well: Rights of Nature: The Case for A Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature and Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth and Justice with contributions from activists and writers from around the world. Both the debate and the books are intended as contributions to the Rio2012 Summit, to take place in Brazil next year.
The Rio Conference in June 2012 runs the risk of being hijacked by Northern industrial interests pushing specific technological and market "solutions" they are eager to impose on the rest of the world in the name of the Green Economy. Take a look at this overview by ETC Group's Jim Thomas.
What we need to be watching in HOME's second year:
- The UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has announced an "expert meeting" on geoengineering to be held in Lima, Peru, June 20-21. The Scientific Steering Group (SSG) has already hand-picked its "experts," but the names of the SSG members will not be released until after the meeting! Civil society is not invited and some who asked to be present (such as ETC Group) were refused. HOME will be watching this process closely even though it looks like there is no way the IPCC is going to let us inside. So much for increased transparency following climategate!
- The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will proceed with negotiations on its new Technology Mechanism, which was adopted in Cancun in December 2010. The goal is to reach agreement on the details before the next Conference of the Parties (COP) in Durban, South Africa later this year. Lacking any framework for the evaluation of new technologies, and leaving current intellectual property rules untouched, this mechanism is likely to do more harm than good.
- The London Convention and Protocol on Ocean Dumping, which has been drafting regulations on ocean fertilization since it adopted a resolution on the question in 2008, is now translating its assessment framework for "legitimate scientific experiments" into legal language. That meeting happens in Montreal, May 31-June 3 and will only be open to invited participants. A recently formed consortium of universities is anxious to bust the moratorium on ocean fertilization experiments using the guise of "scientific research" and they will doubtless be lobbying for large legal loopholes in Montreal.
- The Convention on Biological Diversity will undertake a study on the impacts of geoengineering on biodiversity to be discussed at the meeting of its Scientific Sub-Committee in November 2011. The draft should be released for comment sometime before September. The Secretariat is currently looking for a consultant to do a background paper on legal frameworks, so please point any progressive and available lawyers their way.
There are some signs that the geoengineering lobby is on the defensive:
- The much touted Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative, sponsored by the Royal Society and funded by Bill Gates failed to come up with any recommendations beyond "continuing the conversation" at its recent invitation-only Chatham House Chat held at Chicheley Hall in the UK.
- The March 2010 Asilomar Conference on Climate Intervention, which aimed to come up with a "voluntary code" to govern geoengineering research, also failed to deliver anything of substance beyond commitments to "further discussions."
- Two major reports were due out of Washington by the end of 2010 but neither appeared: one was a geoengineering technology assessment by the Government Accountability Office and another by the Bipartisan Policy Center, which launched a Task Force on Geoengineering to recommend a way forward.
On the other hand, much of the action has simply moved behind closed doors. In the months ahead, we will challenge the astonishing lack of transparency on an issue where an open and inclusive debate is essential.
Send us your comments and ideas, and especially for Mother Earth Day (April 22), seize the opportunity to take photos in your own communities, seek more organizational endorsements for the HOME campaign and do whatever you can to foster greater awareness of the unprecedented dangers that geoengineering poses to people and the planet.
And thanks for being part of this movement! Hands Off Mother Earth!
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One Year at HOME: Thousands of People Build a Movement Against Geoengineering
Exactly one year ago, the HOME campaign (www.handsoffmotherearth.org) was launched at the World Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Since then, hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals have joined the campaign, sent in their pictures and helped raise awareness about the dangers of geoengineering experiments.
La campagne "Touche pas à ma Planète" célèbre son premier anniversaire
[click here for english] Nous avons parcouru beaucoup de chemin en un an, le plus important de nos accomplissements étant sans aucun doute l'adoption, lors de la Conférence des Parties à la Convention sur la Diversité Biologique en octobre 2010, d'un moratoire sur les expérimentations en géoingénierie. Malgré cette victoire d'une grande ampleur, le moratorium [...]
H.O.M.E. is a project of the ETC Group - monitoring power, tracking technology, strengthening diversity
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