Climate changes debated, despite developing countries' protests

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday debated the effect of climate change on conflicts around the world, brushing aside objections from developing countries that global warming is not an issue of international peace and security.

Britain, which holds the rotating council presidency, organized the open session to highlight what its foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said was the "security imperative" to tackle climate change because it can exacerbate problems that cause conflicts and threatens the entire planet.

"What makes wars start? Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use," Beckett said. "There are few greater potential threats to our economies, too ... but also to peace and security itself."

The two major groups representing developing countries -- the Nonaligned Movement and the Group of 77 -- wrote separate letters accusing the Security Council of "ever-increasing encroachment" on the role and responsibility of other U.N. entities.

Climate change and energy are issues for the General Assembly, where all 192 U.N. member states are represented, and the Economic and Social Council, not the 15-member Security Council, they said.

Pakistan's Deputy Ambassador Farukh Amil, whose country heads the Group of 77, told the council its debate not only "infringes" on the authority of other U.N. organs but "compromises the rights of the general membership of the United Nations."

Beckett, who spent five years as Britain's negotiator on climate change, said she understood the reservations.

"I'm the last person to want to undermine the important work that those bodies do," she said, "but this is an issue that threatens the peace and security of the whole planet, and the Security Council has to be the right place to debate it."

On Monday, Beckett noted, top U.S. retired admirals and generals warned in a new report that climate change is a "threat multiplier for instability."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the council that global warming can not only have serious environmental, social and economic effects, but implications for peace and security.

"This is especially true in vulnerable regions that face multiple stresses at the same time -- pre-existing conflict, poverty and unequal access to resources, weak institutions, food insecurity and incidence of diseases such as HIV/AIDS," he said.

Ban outlined several "alarming" scenarios, including limited or threatened access to energy increasing the risk of conflict, a scarcity of food and water transforming peaceful competition into violence, and floods and droughts polarizing societies and weakening the ability of countries to resolve conflicts peacefully.

The world must come together -- including governments and the private sector -- to prevent these scenarios from becoming reality, he said.