Geoengineering for Climate Safety Might be Risky for Malaria

The potential for geoengineering to reduce risks from climate change could introduce a new range of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue.

Geoengineering the climate would have massive repercussions for the health of billions of people at risk of malaria who live in tropical countries, according to a new finding by scientists at Georgetown University Medical Center and colleagues. The study appeared in Nature Communications.

This is the first assessment of how geoengineering the climate could impact the burden of infectious diseases. The study focuses on solar radiation management (SRM), an intervention that hypothesizes emergency actions aimed at reducing the dangerous impacts of climate change.

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‘Malaria risk was predicted to shift significantly in the high warming regions, where geoengineering stimulations were cooling the tropic areas.’

One action that has been proposed is injecting aerosols into the stratosphere that reflect incoming sunlight, thereby temporarily pausing global warming. Though SRM is often discussed as a way to reduce climate injustice, its potential impacts on health have seldom been studied.

“The implications of the study for decision-making are significant,” says Colin Carlson, PhD, an assistant research professor at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center and lead author of the study.

Geoengineering might save lives, but the assumption that it will do so equally for everyone might leave some countries at a disadvantage when it comes time to make decisions.

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If geoengineering is about protecting populations on the frontlines of climate change, we should be able to add up the risks and benefits, especially in terms of neglected health burdens, such as mosquito-borne disease.

A team of eight researchers from the United States, Bangladesh, South Africa, and Germany used climate models to simulate what malaria transmission could look like in two future scenarios, with medium or high levels of global warming, with and without geoengineering.

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The models identify which temperatures are most conducive for transmission by the Anopheles mosquito and identify how many people live in areas where transmission is possible.

They found malaria transmission peaks at 25°C, cooling the tropics using geoengineering might ultimately increase malaria risk in some places relative to an alternative future, but might also increase risk in the present day.

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Whereas geoengineering might substantially reduce malaria risk in the Indian subcontinent even compared to the present day. However, that protective effect would be offset by an increase in risk in southeast Asia. For decision-makers, this might complicate the geopolitical reality of climate intervention.

The conversation is an ongoing one about increasing Global South leadership in geoengineering research. The new study highlights that the frontlines of climate injustice aren’t one monolithic bloc, especially when it comes to health.

Source-Medindia