The Security Council must adress climate-related security risks
Joint statement by 10 members of the United Nations Security Council (Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Niger, Tunisia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the United Kingdom, Viet Nam) and 3 incoming members of the Security Council (Ireland, Kenya, Norway)
on the Open Debate of the Security Council on Climate and Security
24 July 2020
Today the Security Council held an important debate on the implications of climate change on international peace and security, co-sponsored by ten Security Council Member States.
Climate change is the defining issue of our time and a multidimensional challenge. Its security dimension remains to be addressed comprehensively and systematically by the United Nations and particularly by the Security Council, for the Council to live up to its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Millions of people around the world today already experience the effects of climate change which exacerbates, prolongs or contributes to the risk of future conflicts and instability and constitutes a key risk to international peace and security.
Today’s debate sends a clear message that the vast majority of states speaking in the Council today, including some of those most affected by climate change, expect the Council to address these challenges. There is a necessity to improve the international community’s response to climate-related security risks and concrete proposals have been made on how to improve the Security Council’s information basis, to enable UN in-country resources to better respond to information and assessment requests and to increase the UN system’s operational readiness to address climate-related security risks in specific contexts.
We will continue our joint work to improve the Security Council’s access to climate-related information and analysis to better enable the Security Council to assess the security implications of the impacts of climate change and support relevant conflict prevention measures.
The ten members of the Security Council also announced that they will convene an Informal Group of Experts of the Security Council in order to assist the Council to achieve a more comprehensive and systematic approach on climate-related security risks in situations on its agenda.