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Climate security: UN links environment to world peace
photo by IRIN Photos (Flickr CC)
What does the UN Security Council have to do with climate change?
Last year the UN Secretary for the Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, warned that population growth, urbanization, agriculture and climate change increase poverty and decrease security. He may not have been talking about war, but the links between armed conflicts and water and food shortages, as well as population movements due to natural disasters, are not so hard to see.
Food prices have been associated with climate change and NATO has already made the connection between issues of global security and the global environmental crisis.
Now Achim Steiner of the UN Environment Program has made similar, albeit even stronger, statements concerning the connection between war and climate change, following the UN declaration of famine in Somalia.
From the BBC:
He [Steiner] said recent crises, such as in Somalia, illustrate that “our capacity to handle these kinds of events is proving a challenge, particularly if they occur simultaneously and start affecting, for instance, global food markets, regional food security issues, displacing people, creating refugees across borders”
Watch Al Jazeera English’s in depth report on the story:
Tags: Achim Steiner, Climate change, famine, link, security, Somalia, UN, war, world peace
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