Saliem Fakir is the executive director of the African Climate Foundation. Shuchi Talati (PhD) is the executive director of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering.
Global temperatures have crossed 1.1oC above pre-industrial levels. They are likely to cross the 1.5oC Paris Agreement threshold within the next decade, and despite countries’ pledges to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions entering the atmosphere, the world is likely to breach 2oC of warming.
Moving beyond these thresholds significantly raises the threat of irreversible tipping points around the world.
While scientists insist that decarbonization efforts, net-zero targets, and wide-scale adaptation must be prioritized, the Global Stocktake Report notes that our emissions keep rising. Given this race against time, controversial approaches are being put on the table, such as solar radiation modification (SRM, also known as solar geoengineering), a potential stopgap measure against worsening climate change.
Still in its research infancy, SRM refers to large-scale, intentional interventions that increase the amount of sunlight reflected back into space to counteract some types of climate change impacts.
If ever used, it is proposed as a range of relatively fast-acting approaches with potential global benefits, but even this may well be debatable. Governance over the use or non-use of these technologies needs a global approach that requires deep public understanding.
Untangling uncertainty
SRM technologies offer two sides of the same coin – potential benefits include reducing global temperature rise and secondary benefits such as slowing the rate of sea level rise, and limiting harm to the poles, but potential risks include impacts on precipitation patterns, agriculture, and biodiversity.
Uncertainty exists in both the science and the social response.
The usefulness of SRM in the context of climate change is deeply dependent on how science unfolds, who the decision makers are, who has access, willingness, capacity and resources required to master these technologies and the context within which it exists.
Nations fail to agree ban or research on solar geoengineering
To be clear, SRM is not a solution to climate change. It can only be considered alongside robust decarbonization and adaptation efforts. Given the early stages of the development of SRM, more information, discussion, and open-minded conversations with broad groups of stakeholders are needed.
We are at a clear inflection point for the field where momentum is clearly shifting in funding, research, media, and governance. However, much of the narrative about SRM is currently being built in the Global North, where the majority of research and funding on this subject exists.
African voices unheard
The use, or non-use, of this suite of technologies will have global impacts. It is all the more important for the Global South to be actively and effectively engaged with SRM research and governance, due to its potential impacts on their climate vulnerable communities.
Despite Africa’s low contributions (< 4%) to global greenhouse gas emissions, it suffers disproportionate climate change impacts. Its agrarian-dependent economy necessitates an elevated interest in changing local and regional weather patterns; there are strong incentives for Africa to better understand the physical and socio-economic implications of SRM.
African research and policy perspectives on SRM are starting, highlighting several gaps that exist in understanding how these technologies may benefit or harm the continent’s climate efforts.
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One key example is the recent deliberation on a SRM resolution at the Sixth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6). The Africa Group (AG) functioned as a bloc during the deliberation, and proposed the establishment of a publicly accessible repository of existing scientific information, research, and activities on SRM, including submissions from member states and stakeholders.
While the resolution did not reach consensus, the deliberations signified an important shift that African nations are starting to weigh in on the issue.
Building awareness
But more resources, expertise, and engagement are necessary to generate African knowledge and capacity across a range of sectors to contribute to – and start leading – SRM deliberations in the international sphere.
Policymakers across Africa need access to relevant information and an informed civil society sector to shape decisions. Diverse perspectives on whether and how to consider SRM, with grounding and knowledge in the near term, can help African nations prepare for the critical decisions to come.
Building awareness on this topic, with unbiased information rooted in science and based in the African context, will provide answers from both physical and social science perspectives for inclusive and fair SRM decision-making.
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Driving demand to focus on specific issues that Africans are raising, and building their capacity to govern through their key government and NGO institutions, is necessary to enable informed deliberations on SRM regulations at national, regional and international levels.
This summer, the African Climate Foundation and The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering are kicking off a series of Africa-focused workshops to build knowledge around the science, governance, and justice dimensions of SRM.
The first two in the series will highlight African scientists and thought leaders and are virtual and open to the public.
We hope to catalyze interest and engagement across the African continent, widen public discourse on SRM and ensure these discussions go beyond certain circles of experts and the negotiating community. Debates on SRM need to reflect the full spectrum of interests in Africa, and it is time for voices across the continent to coordinate and coalesce.
The post Africa cannot afford to be complacent about solar radiation management appeared first on Climate Home News.
Africa cannot afford to be complacent about solar radiation management
The expansion could add millions of tons of carbon pollution annually while polluting the air near vulnerable communities and ecosystems.
Georgia regulators have approved a massive expansion of natural gas power plants that could dramatically increase the state’s climate pollution, largely to support the rapid growth of data centers.
Georgia Power Gas Expansion Would Drive Significant Climate-Damaging Pollution
The real action is happening locally anyway, says Monique Harden, an environmental justice lawyer and advocate living in Cancer Alley.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Monique Harden, an environmental justice lawyer and advocate in New Orleans.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 6 February 2026: US secret climate panel ‘unlawful’ | China’s clean energy boon | Can humans reverse nature loss?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Secrets and layoffs
UNLAWFUL PANEL: A federal judge ruled that the US energy department “violated the law when secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who rejected the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper explained that a 1972 law “does not allow agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for the purposes of policymaking”. A Carbon Brief factcheck found more than 100 false or misleading claims in the report.
DARKNESS DESCENDS: The Washington Post reportedly sent layoff notices to “at least 14” of its climate journalists, as part of a wider move from the newspaper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, to eliminate 300 jobs at the publication, claimed Climate Colored Goggles. After the layoffs, the newspaper will have five journalists left on its award-winning climate desk, according to the substack run by a former climate reporter at the Los Angeles Times. It comes after CBS News laid off most of its climate team in October, it added.
WIND UNBLOCKED: Elsewhere, a separate federal ruling said that a wind project off the coast of New York state can continue, which now means that “all five offshore wind projects halted by the Trump administration in December can resume construction”, said Reuters. Bloomberg added that “Ørsted said it has spent $7bn on the development, which is 45% complete”.
Around the world
- CHANGING TIDES: The EU is “mulling a new strategy” in climate diplomacy after struggling to gather support for “faster, more ambitious action to cut planet-heating emissions” at last year’s UN climate summit COP30, reported Reuters.
- FINANCE ‘CUT’: The UK government is planning to cut climate finance by more than a fifth, from £11.6bn over the past five years to £9bn in the next five, according to the Guardian.
- BIG PLANS: India’s 2026 budget included a new $2.2bn funding push for carbon capture technologies, reported Carbon Brief. The budget also outlined support for renewables and the mining and processing of critical minerals.
- MOROCCO FLOODS: More than 140,000 people have been evacuated in Morocco as “heavy rainfall and water releases from overfilled dams led to flooding”, reported the Associated Press.
- CASHFLOW: “Flawed” economic models used by governments and financial bodies “ignor[e] shocks from extreme weather and climate tipping points”, posing the risk of a “global financial crash”, according to a Carbon Tracker report covered by the Guardian.
- HEATING UP: The International Olympic Committee is discussing options to hold future winter games earlier in the year “because of the effects of warmer temperatures”, said the Associated Press.
54%
The increase in new solar capacity installed in Africa over 2024-25 – the continent’s fastest growth on record, according to a Global Solar Council report covered by Bloomberg.
Latest climate research
- Arctic warming significantly postpones the retreat of the Afro-Asian summer monsoon, worsening autumn rainfall | Environmental Research Letters
- “Positive” images of heatwaves reduce the impact of messages about extreme heat, according to a survey of 4,000 US adults | Environmental Communication
- Greenland’s “peripheral” glaciers are projected to lose nearly one-fifth of their total area and almost one-third of their total volume by 2100 under a low-emissions scenario | The Cryosphere
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Solar power, electric vehicles and other clean-energy technologies drove more than a third of the growth in China’s economy in 2025 – and more than 90% of the rise in investment, according to new analysis for Carbon Brief (shown in blue above). Clean-energy sectors contributed a record 15.4tn yuan ($2.1tn) in 2025, some 11.4% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) – comparable to the economies of Brazil or Canada, the analysis said.
Spotlight
Can humans reverse nature decline?
This week, Carbon Brief travelled to a UN event in Manchester, UK to speak to biodiversity scientists about the chances of reversing nature loss.
Officials from more than 150 countries arrived in Manchester this week to approve a new UN report on how nature underpins economic prosperity.
The meeting comes just four years before nations are due to meet a global target to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, agreed in 2022 under the landmark “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF).
At the sidelines of the meeting, Carbon Brief spoke to a range of scientists about humanity’s chances of meeting the 2030 goal. Their answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Dr David Obura, ecologist and chair of Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
We can’t halt and reverse the decline of every ecosystem. But we can try to “bend the curve” or halt and reverse the drivers of decline. That’s the economic drivers, the indirect drivers and the values shifts we need to have. What the GBF aspires to do, in terms of halting and reversing biodiversity loss, we can put in place the enabling drivers for that by 2030, but we won’t be able to do it fast enough at this point to halt [the loss] of all ecosystems.
Dr Luthando Dziba, executive secretary of IPBES
Countries are due to report on progress by the end of February this year on their national strategies to the Convention on Biological Diversity [CBD]. Once we get that, coupled with a process that is ongoing within the CBD, which is called the global stocktake, I think that’s going to give insights on progress as to whether this is possible to achieve by 2030…Are we on the right trajectory? I think we are and hopefully we will continue to move towards the final destination of having halted biodiversity loss, but also of living in harmony with nature.
Prof Laura Pereira, scientist at the Global Change Institute at Wits University, South Africa
At the global level, I think it’s very unlikely that we’re going to achieve the overall goal of halting biodiversity loss by 2030. That being said, I think we will make substantial inroads towards achieving our longer term targets. There is a lot of hope, but we’ve also got to be very aware that we have not necessarily seen the transformative changes that are going to be needed to really reverse the impacts on biodiversity.
Dr David Cooper, chair of the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee and former executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity
It’s important to look at the GBF as a whole…I think it is possible to achieve those targets, or at least most of them, and to make substantial progress towards them. It is possible, still, to take action to put nature on a path to recovery. We’ll have to increasingly look at the drivers.
Prof Andrew Gonzalez, McGill University professor and co-chair of an IPBES biodiversity monitoring assessment
I think for many of the 23 targets across the GBF, it’s going to be challenging to hit those by 2030. I think we’re looking at a process that’s starting now in earnest as countries [implement steps and measure progress]…You have to align efforts for conserving nature, the economics of protecting nature [and] the social dimensions of that, and who benefits, whose rights are preserved and protected.
Neville Ash, director of the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre
The ambitions in the 2030 targets are very high, so it’s going to be a stretch for many governments to make the actions necessary to achieve those targets, but even if we make all the actions in the next four years, it doesn’t mean we halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. It means we put the action in place to enable that to happen in the future…The important thing at this stage is the urgent action to address the loss of biodiversity, with the result of that finding its way through by the ambition of 2050 of living in harmony with nature.
Prof Pam McElwee, Rutgers University professor and co-chair of an IPBES “nexus assessment” report
If you look at all of the available evidence, it’s pretty clear that we’re going to keep experiencing biodiversity decline. I mean, it’s fairly similar to the 1.5C climate target. We are not going to meet that either. But that doesn’t mean that you slow down the ambition…even though you recognise that we probably won’t meet that specific timebound target, that’s all the more reason to continue to do what we’re doing and, in fact, accelerate action.
Watch, read, listen
OIL IMPACTS: Gas flaring has risen in the Niger Delta since oil and gas major Shell sold its assets in the Nigerian “oil hub”, a Climate Home News investigation found.
LOW SNOW: The Washington Post explored how “climate change is making the Winter Olympics harder to host”.
CULTURE WARS: A Media Confidential podcast examined when climate coverage in the UK became “part of the culture wars”.
Coming up
- 2-8 February: 12th session of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), Manchester, UK
- 8 February: Japanese general election
- 8 February: Portugal presidential election
- 11 February: Barbados general election
- 11-12 February: UN climate chief Simon Stiell due to speak in Istanbul, Turkey
Pick of the jobs
- UK Met Office, senior climate science communicator | Salary: £43,081-£46,728. Location: Exeter, UK
- Canadian Red Cross, programme officer, Indigenous operations – disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation | Salary: $56,520-$60,053. Location: Manitoba, Canada
- Aldersgate Group, policy officer | Salary: £33,949-£39,253. Location: London (hybrid)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 6 February 2026: US secret climate panel ‘unlawful’ | China’s clean energy boon | Can humans reverse nature loss? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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