About the Hands Off Mother Earth Alliance
Hands Off Mother Earth (HOME) Alliance is a diverse and inclusive coalition of Indigenous Peoples’, civil society, feminists, human rights, grassroots and climate justice groups that are working to reject all forms of geoengineering as false solutions to the climate crisis, while fighting for real solutions.
What does HOME Alliance do?
Movement Building
We mobilise movements across continents. We build power to champion real solutions and counter geoengineering.
Advocacy
We engage in policy spaces — from the local level to United Nations fora — to advocate for effective and precautionary international agreements to oppose the legitimisation of geoenegineering
Campaigning
We build and support campaigns against geoengineering projects and for sound policies and restrictive regulations and governance.
Narratives
We influence the public discourse by engaging in media and popular education work to counter efforts to normalise geoengineering.
“Impossible to test for their intended climate impact without large scale deployment, these speculative technologies are a dangerous distraction from the real solutions to the climate crisis, put billions of peoples at risk and give the fossil fuel industry a free pass. Despite well-documented risks, outdoor experiments proceed in defiance of the de facto global moratorium under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the moves towards stringent regulation under the London Protocol. Governments must act decisively to uphold and enforce these agreements, sending a clear message that geoengineering is off-limits.”
Mary Church
Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)
HOME Alliance Steering Committee
HOME Alliance members speak
“Geoengineering cannot be tested before it is deployed because small-scale experiments cannot assess the impacts of geoengineering on climate change. The climate is a very complex and dynamic system, so isolating the effects of geoengineering deployment from other climate variations would require large-scale deployment and decades of monitoring. Geoengineering experiments are, therefore, just a way of developing the means of deployment and will create a technological lock-in where geoengineering deployment is presented as inevitable. The illusion that a technofix solution will function in the future provides polluters with an excuse to continue the status quo while distracting from efforts to address the root causes of climate change.”
Silvia Ribeiro
ETC Group
“The impacts of geoengineering would be disastrous for the climate, environment, humanity and all life as we know it, particularly when deployed at scale. Geoengineering poses a grave threat to the Sacredness of all life and the traditional values of Indigenous Peoples who are generationally educated to treat nature with love and respect, not as an experiment to manipulate Earth."
Panganga Pungowiyi
Indigenous Enviornmental Network
Some landmarks
Home Alliance Statement on Marine geoengineering
Deeply concerned by the proliferation of open-water marine geoengineering experiments, the HOME Alliance coordinated a statement calling for states to prevent outdoor experiments and support the development of strong precautionary controls at the London Convention / London Protocol. The statement has over 100 endorsements.
SCoPEx is cancelled
SCoPEx, a high-profile solar geoengineering experiment housed at Harvard University closed its doors in March 2024 after years of strong criticism and powerful opposition, particularly from Indigenous Peoples Organizations and civil society, including the HOME Alliance.
UNEA 6 - Defeat of dubious geoengineering resolution
At the sixth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6), a resolution on solar geoengineering was withdrawn when the African Group, along with other Global South countries, strongly advocated for any resolution on SRM to uplift the existing UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) moratorium on geoengineering and call for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering.
HOME ‘Alliance’
In 2022, the HOME campaign has grown so much that it organically transitioned into the HOME ‘Alliance’. The Manifesto is then signed by over 200+ organisations worldwide.
Stopping SCoPEx experiment in Sweden
United forces spanning HOME members and allies together with other civil society organisations and social movements, academics and the Saami Indigenous Peoples effectively resisted the Harvard-based SCoPEx experiment, that was intended to conduct a first ever open-air experiment. After public pressure made the Swedish Space Centre withdrew from the intended stratospheric balloon flight, in 2021, the SCoPEx project was eventually terminated in 2024.
Lauch of HOME Manifesto
HOME launched in 2018 the ‘HOME Manifesto’ to call for a ban on all geoengineering field experiments and deployment, for a stop to large-scale carbon capture and storage or direct air capture, and for proven alternatives to geoengineering sidelined in climate deliberations to be adopted. The Manifesto was initially signed by 100+ organisations worldwide.
CBD de facto moratorium on Geoengineering
The Convention on Biological Diversity has taken several landmark precautionary decisions on climate engineering since 2008, including a de facto moratorium on deploying geoengineering technologies (Decision X/33 8(w)), reaffirmed at several subsequent COPs, most recently in 2016.
Hands Off Mother Earth campaign is launched
The Hands Off Mother Earth (HOME!) campaign was initiated and launched during the 2010 World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia by a coalition of international civil society groups, Indigenous Peoples organizations, and social movements. The goal was to defend Earth against the threat of geoengineering experiments.
London Convention/London Protocol (LC/LP)
London Convention/London Protocol (LC/LP), which promotes the effective control of marine pollution and regulates the dumping at sea, has been developing a restrictive regulatory regime for marine geoengineering since 2007.
Geoengineering includes many different technologies. They are all risky, speculative and poised to be controlled by superpowers and wealthy corporations. None address the root causes of climate change.