All the clashes between Russia and the UN on the climate
Russia vetoes the UN Security Council resolution linking the climate crisis to international peace
Russia vetoed a first UN Security Council resolution defining the climate crisis as a threat to international peace and security – a vote that sank a years-long effort to make global warming more central in the process. decision-making in the most powerful body of the UN. The Guardian writes.
Led by Ireland and Niger, the proposal called for "incorporating information on the security implications of climate change" into the Council's conflict management strategies and peacekeeping operations and political missions, at least occasionally.
The measure also asked the UN Secretary-General to make climate-related security risks "a core component" of conflict prevention efforts and to report on how to address those risks in specific hot spots.
The council has occasionally discussed the security implications of climate change since 2007 and passed resolutions mentioning the destabilizing effects of warming in specific places, such as various African countries and Iraq. But Monday's resolution would have been the first devoted to the climate-related security threat as an issue in its own right.
Stronger storms, rising seas, more frequent floods and droughts, and other effects of warming could ignite social tensions and conflicts, potentially "posing a key risk to global peace, security and stability," the proposed resolution said. Of the 193 UN member countries, 113 supported it, including 12 of the 15 council members.
But India and Russia, which vetoes, voted no, while China abstained.
Their envoys said the issue should be addressed by larger UN groups, such as the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Adding climate change to the Security Council's sphere of competence would only exacerbate the global divisions that were highlighted by last month's climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, opponents said. The talks ended with an agreement that reaffirmed a key goal to limit warming and opened a new path, but failed to meet the UN's three big goals for the conference.
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia complained that the resolution proposed on Monday would turn "a scientific and economic issue into a politicized one," diverting the council's attention from what it called "genuine" sources of conflict in various places and giving the council a pretext to intervene in practically any country on the planet.
"This approach would be a time bomb," he said.
India and China have questioned the idea of linking the conflict to the climate and have heralded difficulties with Glasgow's commitments if the Security Council – a body that can impose sanctions and dispatch peacekeepers – begins to exercise a heavier weight.
"What the security council has to do is not a political spectacle," Chinese ambassador Zhang Jun said.
Supporters of the measure said it represents a modest and reasonable step to take on an issue of existential importance.
"Today was an opportunity for the council to recognize, for the first time, the reality of the world we live in and that climate change is increasing insecurity and instability," said Irish Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason. "Instead, we have lost the opportunity to act and look away from the reality of the world we live in."
The proponents have promised to keep the council's eye on climate risks.
"The force of the veto can block the approval of a text", said the ambassador of Niger, Abdou Abarry, "but it cannot hide our reality".
(Extract from the press review of eprcomunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/russia-onu-clima/ on Sat, 18 Dec 2021 07:20:47 +0000.