Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 7 • Number 8 • 27th April 2007

Security Council Debates Climate Change

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Members of the UN Security Council discussed climate change for the first time on 17 April. They did not issue any resolution or statement on the topic, and also disagreed internally on whether the Security Council was an appropriate forum for such a discussion.

Introduced by the UK, the topic did not fare well with the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement nor the Group-77 developing countries. Russia and China also felt climate and energy should be discussed in other fora, such as the General Assembly.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett stressed, however, that “The Security Council is the forum to discuss issues that threaten the peace and security of the international community. What makes wars start? Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also said that “issues of energy and climate change have implications for peace and security.” Speaking for the Pacific Island Forum, Papua New Guinea’s U.N. Ambassador Robert Aisi added that “The dangers that the small islands and their populations face [due to climate change] are no less serious than those nations and peoples threatened by guns and bombs.”

According to Becket, the purpose of the debate was to make sure climate change moved from being a fringe issue into the mainstream.

Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol will be meeting in December this year at a crucial conference in Bali to hammer out a plan for negotiating future climate change commitments. Ban Ki-moon has suggested the possibility of holding a high-level meeting to focus politicians’ minds on the issue in September, before the December meeting. This could pave the way for a global climate summit in 2009.

“First climate debate divides UN,” BBC, 18 April 2007; “U.N. Security Council holds groundbreaking debate on climate change over protests from developing countries,” AP, 17 April 2007; “UK Puts Climate Change in UN Council, China Objects,” REUTERS, 18 April 2007.