Geoengineering and Human Rights: The False Promise of Techno-Salvation

Geoengineering promises to mitigate the climate crisis. From a human-rights based perspective, however, it currently causes more harm than good.

Patrycja Sasnal will provide a glimpse into the contents and drafting process of the first United Nations report on geoengineering and human rights before its publication in the fall of 2023.

Dr. Patrycja Sasnal is a political scientist, Arabist and philosopher. She is a visiting professor at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA and professor of migration at College of Europe. She also works as head of research at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. She is an expert of the Advisory Committee of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, member of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ council, and the Polish Ombudsman office’s expert commission on migration. She was previously a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington and an associate researcher at the American University in Beirut. She specializes in Middle Eastern politics, migration and political violence. She has written for The Guardian, Le Monde and Polityka. Her latest book is Arendt, Fanon and Political Violence in Islam (Routledge, 2019). Sasnal holds a PhD in political science.

At IoES, she is working on a report for the UN Human Rights Council regarding the impact of technologies for climate protection on the enjoyment on human rights. In the Spring quarter 22/23 she will teach a class on Geoengineering and Human Rights.