Link between climate and peace cut from UN Pact for the Future

Early drafts of the Pact for the Future, a key United Nations document aimed at shaping the future of global cooperation, established an explicit link between climate change and efforts to deliver human peace and security. But by the time the document was approved on Sunday, that language was gone, written out following staunch objections from Russia and other large emerging economies. The Pact for the Future is a nonbinding U.N. agreement that set the stage for the Summit of the Future — an attempt by Secretary-General António Guterres to reboot multilateralism and secure his legacy. Several countries had sought to use the pact to make the U.N. system recognize and respond to the links between climate, peace, and security. But fraught negotiations exposed ongoing disagreements on an issue that experts say has become “hyperpoliticized.” For low-lying small island states, where climate change poses an existential threat, and many African nations, where climate impacts are leading to food insecurity, addressing climate, peace, and security together has become a key issue. More than half of the world’s 25 most climate-vulnerable countries are affected by conflict. Poor governance and conflict leave people more vulnerable to climate change while worsening climate impacts can undermine social cohesion and fuel existing tensions. Yet, fragile and conflict-affected states receive only a fraction of the climate finance they need to build resilience, with countries grappling with armed conflict receiving the least. “It’s very clear that without climate adaptation and resilience efforts, we are looking at really dismal outcomes for many of these countries,” Nazanine Moshiri, a senior analyst on climate, environment, and conflict at the International Crisis Group, told Devex. The Group of Friends on Climate and Security, a coalition of 66 countries, proposed that the Pact call on U.N. bodies, including the U.N. Security Council, to address the impacts of climate change on peace and security. But countries including Russia, Turkey, Brazil, and India opposed linking climate action to the peace and security agenda. They argue the “securitization” of the climate agenda could justify responses that risk threatening countries’ sovereignty and divert attention away from primary drivers of conflict. Climate and security should be addressed in their respective U.N. bodies, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Security Council, they say. Over five iterations of the draft pact, the nexus linking climate with peace and security was replaced by language considering the impacts of climate change on efforts to sustain peace. Eventually, “climate change” was deleted from the whole section of the text. Instead, countries agreed to “adapt peace operations to better respond to existing challenges and new realities.” “It is really disappointing and it’s frustrating for some countries to see this regression,” said Moshiri. The Security Council previously acknowledged that the impacts of climate change such as floods, droughts, and land degradation impact the stability and security of the Sahel. The Pact for the Future could have laid out an approach to assess these risks and respond to them, said Moshiri. “The problem is that this nexus, which is very clear on the ground such as in Africa, is falling into a kind of [institutional] no man’s land,” she said. Years of political wrangling have failed to qualify the extent of the links between climate, peace, and security at the U.N. — or even to reach consensus over whether those links exist at all. In 2021, Russia vetoed a Security Council draft resolution integrating climate-related security risks into the council’s strategies to prevent conflict. Russia argued this could be used as a pretext to intervene in a country’s domestic policies, given the council’s powers to impose sanctions and dispatch peacekeeping troops, climate security experts told Devex. Benjamin Pohl, of the think tank Adelphi, described the argument as “a red herring.” The deadlock “has nothing to do with the substance of the policies” to integrate climate action with the peace and security agenda, he told Devex. “This is symbolic politics. This topic has become hyper politicized in the Security Council and in the U.N. system more broadly.” Framing the issue around building and sustaining peace rather than security, which has connotations of militarisation for some, has the potential to broaden support, Pohl argued, despite noting that “some countries don’t seem open for a discussion on the substance.” “We need climate responses to promote peace,” agreed Tendai Kasinganeti, a Zimbabwean climate security expert. “Why are leaders globally not accepting that this is a critical issue for Africa?” African countries have held some of the most advanced discussions on linking climate with peace and security and the African Union could adopt a common position on the issue next month. This includes mainstreaming peacebuilding and conflict-sensitivity in climate action and ensuring postconflict reconstruction helps build resilience, Kasinganeti told Devex. A case in point is the devastating flooding that compounded a humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan, which is in the grips of a brutal civil war. “How do we mainstream climate adaptation and resilience building in missions to Sudan?” as the violence impedes both humanitarian aid and climate funding, asked Kasinganeti. For Mauricio Vazquez, who heads the ODI think tank’s policy work on global risks and resilience, moving this agenda forward requires rethinking the interplay between conflict and climate. Experts generally agree that climate change doesn’t directly cause conflict, and scientists have described the influence of climate on conflict as “relatively weak.” But the impacts of unchecked climate change, such as growing food insecurity, will interact with conflict risks, they say. Vazquez argues that addressing the root causes of fragility and climate vulnerability will help build peace and resilience to shocks. “By focusing too much on how climate exacerbates conflict, we risk failing to prioritise fragile and conflict-affected states that have been left behind by development and, because of this, are the ones suffering some of the worst climate impacts,” he told Devex.