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Groups seek halt to commodifying, exploiting of oceans amid geoengineering threats – EnviroNews
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Civil society organisations, Indigenous Peoples, and climate justice groups gathered on Friday, June 12, 2026, at the UN climate negotiations SB64 to raise concerns over blue economy initiatives and the growing push for marine geoengineering.
They stated that, though framed as climate solutions, these approaches are false solutions and dangerous distractions that deepen extractivism, enable destructive development models, and divert attention from real and just solutions to the climate crisis.
Ranjana Giri, Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, said: “Under the Blue Economy framework, the oceans are increasingly being positioned as the next frontier for unchecked extraction, corporate monopolisation, and geopolitical conflict. Many climate and development plans, policies and projects are promoted in the name of adaptation, coastal protection, resilience, renewable energy, green logistics, ecotourism and low-carbon development.
“These include giant seawalls, land reclamation, land bridges, ports, floating solar systems, marine protected areas, blue carbon projects and other infrastructure that depends on the exploration, expansion, and extraction of ocean resources. While framed as solutions, these initiatives only benefit the powerful few while deepening inequalities and disproportionately impacting women, coastal communities, at the expense of planetary health, climate justice and the well-being of present and future generations.”
Marine geoengineering, which is a risky and deliberate large-scale technological scheme to manipulate the oceans, does not address the root causes of the climate crisis and aims to temporarily mask some of the effects of climate change, they claimed.
Mary Church of the CIEL said: “The ocean is our greatest ally in the fight against climate breakdown, not a laboratory for risky geoengineering. Already under severe pressure from heating, pollution, and overexploitation, these highly speculative interventions could undermine or even reverse its vital role as earth’s largest sink.”
Concerningly, both blue economy initiatives and marine geoengineering are increasingly being legitimized within UN climate policy spaces and global discussions on oceans. This also includes opening up of carbon markets to exploit the oceans.
Church added: “Marine carbon dioxide removals – driven in large part by voluntary carbon markets – risk causing irreversible harm while diverting scarce resources and political will away from proven, rights-based climate solutions.”
Aakaluk Adrienne Blatchford, Indigenous Environmental Network, said: “This process of forming governance around oceans lacks free prior informed consent of Indigenous communities and impacted coastal populations globally.”
Highlighting how the African continent strongly opposes geoengineering technologies, Kwami Kpondzo, Global Forest Coalition, said: “Africa must not be taken in or drawn into a new cycle of colonialism disguised in this wave of carbon markets and carbon credits. Polluters are promoting geoengineering technologies to maintain the carbon market schemes which continue to worsen the climate crisis. Indigenous Peoples and local communities already hold real solutions to global warming, including traditional knowledge, agroecology, and community forest conservation.”
The impacts of these approaches are said to be far-reaching, threatening food systems, cultural survival, and ecological integrity, particularly for frontline and Indigenous communities.
“The oceans and forests are the lungs of the world that connect our lands, our People and the migratory species that travel intercontinentally. It is time we have meaningful conversations away from commodifying Mother Earth and move towards an Indigenous led Just Transition from fossil fuel dependence and industrialism and form real solutions that ensure a thriving Mother Earth for generations to come,” added Blatchford.
There are existing international governance frameworks like the de facto moratorium on geoengineering that was reaffirmed in 2024 highlighting the commitment of governments to a precautionary approach to geoengineering. The London Convention/London Protocol also calls for precaution on various marine geoengineering technologies including effectively prohibiting ocean fertilisation schemes among others.
“States must act now and uphold precaution, halt the proliferation of open ocean experiments, and reject the normalisation of these dangerous and unproven technologies,” concluded Mary Church.
