Moscow opposed its veto, Monday, the UN Security Council, a draft resolution establishing a link between global warming and safety around the world, which was supported by 113 United Nations members.
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A draft resolution, aimed at expanding the mandate of the UN Security Council to a number of peace and security issues related to climate change, and supported by the majority of the international community, was dismissed on Monday, December 13 . Russia opposed its right of veto, although 12 of the 15 members are favorable.
“Time does not play in our favor,” said Geraldine Byrne Nason, the Ambassador of Ireland, the Coautrus of the Text, the first on this theme ever submitted to the vote on the Council. “Climate change is an amplifier of factors at the basis of insecurity, has brought Abdou Abarry, the Ambassador of Niger, the other co-authority of the resolution. Because we live it on a daily basis, we say it.” More 70% of the Council’s agenda concerns African files, but Africa, and the Sahel especially, being particularly concerned with climate change, it was important for the African continent that the Council could finally be seized for security crises linked to climate change.
Knowing Russian reserves to expand the mandate of the Council, this text proposed modest initiatives, and was supported by 113 countries: the willingness of the majority of the international community did not matter. “He simply asked the UN secretariat to consider climate change more systematically,” says Benjamin Pohl, in charge of climate diplomacy and safety at the Adelphi think group. It did not threaten anyone, it cost nothing. “
A text before any symbolic
The resolution demanded a report by the Secretary-General within two years of the influence of climate change on crises managed by the Board, and more training of peacekeeping teams on the subject. The creation of a Climate Special Representative at the UN had been abandoned when negotiating the text between the fifteen members of the Security Council. “This text was above all symbolic, continues Benjamin Pohl. It was starting to say that climate change did not just have an impact on health or the economy, but also on international security.”
It is well known to the United Nations that Russia refuses any expansion of the Security Council mandate, concerned with limiting its scope. India also voted against the resolution, arguing that global warming was linked to an issue of economic development. “India prefers that the question remains the prerogative of other bodies on which it has a permanent control, rather than in advice, where it is only next year”, decrypts Ashish Pradhan of the International Crisis Group. As for China, which usually follows the Russian line on the refusal to alter the mandate of the Council, it has only abstained – the majority of the members of the group of the 77 developing countries to which it belongs who has supported the text, She could not go against.
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