Leaders warn UN that a warmer world is also more violent

UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Using apocalyptic images, three presidents and seven foreign ministers warned Thursday that a warmer world is also more violent.

At a Security Council ministerial meeting, officials urged the most powerful UN body to do more to address the security implications of climate change and make global warming a key part of all peacekeeping operations in the United States. UN.

Leaders and ministers pushing for more UN action said warming is making the world less safe, pointing to the conflict-ridden Sahel region of Africa and Syria and Iraq as examples.

Micheal Martin, President of Ireland, who chaired the meeting, said climate change “is already contributing to conflict in many parts of the world.” And Vietnam’s President Nguyen Xuan Phuc said that climate change “is a war without gunfire, so to speak, causing economic damage and loss of life no less severe than actual wars.”

“The effects of climate change are particularly profound when they overlap with past or current fragility and conflicts,” said U. General Secretary Antonio Guterres. “And when natural resources like water become scarce due to climate change, complaints and tensions can erupt, complicating efforts to prevent conflict and maintain peace.”

The introduction of the issue in the Security Council, which is not usually a place for debate on the environment, is an emerging notion, arising due to the growing recognition that in human ecosystems, natural stressors and traditional notions security and peace are inexorable. intertwined.

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“Our daily lives and realities are at the nexus of climate change insecurity,” said Ilwad Elman, a Somali-Canadian peace activist. “The impact of climate change and environmental degradation is also changing what it takes to build peace … because we are experiencing climate-related shocks and stresses.”

For years, scholars studying conflict and climate change have been highlighting how events like a Syrian drought, the only one in a millennium, have exacerbated conflicts without being the only causes. It is a more nuanced approach to understanding conflicts and developing tools that reduce their impact on societies.

“Look almost everywhere you see threats to international peace and security today, and you will see that climate change is making things less peaceful, less safe and our response even more challenging,” said the secretary. of State of the United States, Antony Blinken. . He cited a list of nations that includes Syria, Mali, Yemen, South Sudan and Ethiopia.

“We have to stop debating whether the climate crisis belongs to the Security Council,” Blinken said, “and instead ask how the council can harness its unique powers to address the negative impacts of climate on peace and security.”

Russian and Chinese diplomats reiterated their countries’ objections to putting climate change on the agenda of the council, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security, when other international and UN forums are addressing the entire climate issue.

“There is a Russian saying that … too many cooks spoil the broth,” said Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky. He accused the council members of introducing “a completely unnecessary political component into an already complicated and delicate discussion.”

Chinese Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun said the council should “refrain from using a wholesale approach”, saying that not all war-torn countries “were thrown into chaos due to climate change.”

Still, most of the leaders who spoke Thursday morning were painting a grim picture for the planet as a whole. They said that climate change must be fought in the same way that the world is fighting the coronavirus because, for the planet, it is a matter of life and death.

The decisions of the UN climate conference in November in Glasgow, Scotland, “will decide whether this decade will be remembered as the decade in which we began to save the planet or the beginning of the end,” said Estonian President Kersti Jaljulaid.

At the General Assembly’s annual meeting of world leaders on Thursday, Angolan President Joao Lourenco said the Earth “has been giving us increasingly clear signals that it is not happy with the way we treat it and are he is defending in the most violent way possible. “

And the night before, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who will host the climate negotiations in Scotland, delivered a speech that began with a lesson on the extinction of mammals and then reminded the world that humans are mammals too.

“Our grandchildren will know that we are to blame. And they’ll know that we knew, that we were warned, ”Johnson said. “And you will wonder what kind of people we were to be so selfish and so shortsighted.”