Russia has blocked a draft UN Security Council resolution that has been in talks for months. The initiative was the first to identify climate change as a threat to the world, according to The New York Times.
The widely supported resolution would significantly expand the criteria used by "the UN's most powerful agency to justify interference in armed conflicts around the world." The "collapse" of these measures, organized by Moscow, highlighted the problems facing an international organization that is trying to unite the world community in the fight against climate change, the newspaper notes.
The possible role of climate change in armed conflict has long been discussed at the UN. Thus, droughts and desertification in African countries are considered an integral part of competition for water, food, agricultural land and pastures, which can lead to violence and instability, recalls The New York Times.
Ireland and Niger co-sponsored a draft UN Security Council resolution. It would oblige the government to include climate change as a factor in "any root causes of conflict or risk multipliers," the paper said.
Twelve of the 15 members of the UN Security Council voted in favor of the resolution, Russia and India voted against and China abstained. As Moscow is one of the five permanent members of the veto body, its vote blocked the initiative.
Russia's permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, said his country sees the resolution as a pretext to allow wealthy Western powers to justify interference in other countries' internal affairs. According to him, positioning climate change as a threat to international security "distracts the Security Council from the real causes of armed conflict."
The resolution was also further criticized on the website of the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations. According to diplomats, the proposal to create an automatic link to climate change "ignores all other aspects of situations in which countries are in conflict or lagging behind in socio-economic development."
India's Permanent Representative to the UN T.S. Tirumurti said his country "has no equal in the fight against climate change", but the Security Council is not appropriate to discuss the issue. He and Nebenzia called for the issue to be left to the relevant department of the organization.
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