Small island states and UK warn of climate threats to security

“Whether you like it or not, the question is when, not if, your country and your people will have to deal with the security impacts of climate change,” says Boris Johnson.

By Laurie Goring

LONDON, Feb. 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – After powerful Hurricane Irma destroyed 90% of homes on the Caribbean island of Barbuda in 2017, the government – facing a second storm – evacuated all 1,600 residents to the most the country’s largest island, Antigua.

“What if Hurricane Irma had moved a few miles south and hit both islands?” Prime Minister Gaston Browne questioned Tuesday in a speech before the UN Security Council, during a discussion on the rise of security risks linked to climate change.

As a warming world poses increasing threats to the lives and stability of vulnerable island states, “to what international plan and system would my country resort, following such an attack on our peace and our safety? He asked.

Major changes – from new tools to predict and prepare for climate-related security threats to changes in international law to accommodate “climate refugees” – are now urgently needed to protect people, Browne told D other world leaders.

“Make no mistake about it, the existential threat of climate change to our own survival is not a future consideration, but a current reality,” he said during the virtual event.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who hosted the session ahead of the UN’s COP26 climate talks scheduled for November in Glasgow, said climate change had become “a geopolitical issue as much as an environmental issue”.

Around the world, weather-related disasters now displace 16 million people a year and fuel migration, water shortages and crop failures also making vulnerable people prey to violent extremists and human traffickers , did he declare.

The impacts of climate change – from rising sea levels to worsening wildfires, droughts, floods and storms – are undermining development in poor countries and will worsen without prompt action to reduce global warming emissions, they said.

The dangers are increasingly evident for rich and poor countries alike, they added, whether in the form of a wilder climate, higher insurance costs or greater number of migrants crossing borders.

“It is absolutely clear that climate change is a threat to our collective security and the security of our nations,” Johnson said.

“Whether you like it or not, the question is when, not if, your country and your people will have to deal with the security impacts of climate change.

‘FRONT AND CENTER’

As part of the UN climate negotiations and other groupings, countries have taken steps to address growing risks, including creating new insurance pools for poor countries threatened by extreme weather.

As part of the Paris Agreement on climate change, the richest countries have also pledged to raise $100 billion a year from 2020 to help the poorest countries develop cleanly and adapt to more extreme weather conditions and rising seas – a goal yet to be achieved.

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has been pushing for three decades to find a formal way to address the inevitable ‘loss and damage’ from climate change, including the potential loss of entire islands to higher seas. .

A “Warsaw Mechanism” to deal with climate loss and damage has been created as part of the UN talks – but little help is on offer apart from support for insurance policies.

So far, representatives of small island states have said international action has lagged, with Browne calling efforts “fragmented and frankly inadequate”.

Aubrey Webson, President of AOSIS and Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the United Nations, said that getting the UN Security Council to support faster action on climate risks could pave the way for breakthroughs at COP26.

“What we might need to see is the Security Council flex its muscles to push the COP forward,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

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(Reporting by Laurie Goering @lauriegoering; Editing by Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)

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