Toward a Geoethical Framework for Living Climate Interventions under International Maritime Law

Emerging biological approaches to climate intervention raise core geoethical questions as synthetic biology advances toward the release of engineered cyanobacteria and other organisms designed to enhance carbon sequestration. As biogeoengineering moves toward field-scale deployment, geoscientists will increasingly be responsible for modeling, assessing, and monitoring impacts across ocean biogeochemistry, ecological networks, and Earth-system processes. Because living organisms can reproduce, evolve, and spread unpredictably across ecological and political boundaries, biogeoengineering demands a dedicated geoethical framework distinct from those used for conventional, non-living geoengineering interventions.

This contribution offers an anticipatory geoethical framework for living climate interventions, drawing on comparative insights from biotechnology regulation, environmental law, and international maritime law, which provides both jurisdictional complexity and a normative anchor for geoethical oversight of ocean-based interventions. Its novelty lies in integrating governance approaches from biotechnology and geoscience, foregrounding Global South perspectives and Indigenous epistemologies, and specifying concrete geoscientific responsibilities that must accompany biological climate interventions. The framework identifies four interdependent governance mechanisms that can be built upon existing international treaties to create enforceable, rather than voluntary, accountability. These mechanisms include liability rules to address transboundary harm and geo-colonial risks; mandatory impact assessments that integrate ocean biogeochemistry, ecological modeling, and biosafety analysis; conditional authorizations tied to geoscientifically informed thresholds of environmental safety; and shared-governance structures determining who holds authority to release engineered organisms into international waters or manipulate ocean ecosystems.

These mechanisms depend on active engagement by geoscientists, whose professional obligations must extend beyond traditional observational roles. Geoscientists must establish baseline environmental conditions, design monitoring networks capable of detecting unintended ecological cascades or genetic dispersal, model uncertainties across interconnected ocean systems, and communicate risks transparently. Because biological interventions interact with complex marine processes that are only partially understood, these responsibilities also include ethical deliberation and the co-production of monitoring criteria with affected communities. Meaningful inclusion of local and Indigenous knowledge systems is essential to ensure that populations most vulnerable to potential harms exercise real, rather than symbolic, influence over decisions that may affect their environments and livelihoods.

The Cartagena Protocol’s procedures for the transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms provide an important precedent for biosafety oversight. Yet extending these principles to biogeoengineering requires clarifying whether climate-intervention organisms fall within existing definitions or necessitate new regulatory provisions, particularly given their release into maritime spaces governed by complex jurisdictional regimes. Given risks of ecological cascades, genetic contamination, and unequal distributions of harm across regions, binding safeguards are necessary for any intervention that modifies ocean ecosystems through engineered microbes or biologically driven processes.

By articulating a pathway for just and responsible stewardship, this framework advances SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 14 (Life Below Water), and SDG 16 (Strong Institutions). It also contributes directly to responsible geoscience practice by offering foundations for future codes of conduct, funding criteria, and international decision-making norms. Ultimately, it shifts the central question from whether to intervene to how to govern such interventions ethically, equitably, and with full recognition of their planetary-scale implications.