In a pioneering research conducted recently revealed some 1 billion people of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable regions can be put back into risk of malaria transmission impacted by solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering aimed at reducing global warming.
The research was conducted by scientists from icddr,b and other international research institutions and the study was published on April 20 in Nature Communications titled “Solar geoengineering could redistribute malaria risk in developing countries”, said iccdr’b in a press release on Thursday.
A team of eight researchers from the United States, Bangladesh, South Africa, and Germany conducted the research to understand how SRM geoengineering could impact some of the world’s most vulnerable tropical countrieswith the burden of infectious diseases.
Colin Carlson, PhD, an assistant research professor at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center has led the research team.
Geoengineering means large-scale interventions in how the planet works to slow down or reverse the effects of climate change.
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The study focuses on SRM, a hypothetical emergency intervention aimed at reducing the dangerous impacts of climate change by injecting aerosols into the stratosphere that reflect incoming sunlight as a possible to temporarily “pause” to global warming.
Though SRM is often discussed as a way to reduce climate injustice, its potential impacts on health have barely been studied.
“In a planet that’s too hot for humans, it also gets too hot for the malaria parasite. Cooling the planet might be an emergency option to save lives, but it would also reverse course on those declines,” said Carlson.
