United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson today emphasized the impact that climate change has on food security, peace and stability, and called on countries to cooperate to address this phenomenon.
“We usually say there is always a 'Plan B’, but there is no 'Planet B’. There is enough human-introduced carbon in the atmosphere to drive climate change for decades to come,” Mr. Eliasson told participants at the ministerial side event on climate change and its impact on foreign and security policy.
“We have to mitigate our emissions and we have to adapt. And we have to act now to stop things getting worse,” he said at the meeting, held on the margins of the high-level debate of the General Assembly’s 67th session.
Mr. Eliasson stressed that the only way to ensure energy, food and water security is to have a long-term strategy in place which allows countries to transition to sustainable, low-emission economies. He underlined the importance of establishing sustainable development goals as was agreed by countries during the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) earlier this year.
For the complete article, please see UN News Centre.
For the the speech of the German Foreign Minister, Dr. Guido Westerwelle at the German-Moroccan Side Event, please follow this link.
A new publication on SDGs and foreign policy, prepared by researchers at the German think tank adelphi, highlights a phenomenon I call this the ‘Great Splintering’ – the fracturing of political will for collective action on the global stage. This article outlines five steps we could take to revive multilateralism.
Satellite analysis shows ‘vanishing’ lake has grown since 1990s, but climate instability is driving communities into the arms of Boko Haram and Islamic State. Climate change is aggravating conflict around Lake Chad, but not in the way experts once thought, according to new research.
At a meeting of the Arctic Council, secretary of state Mike Pompeo refused to identify global warming as a threat, instead hailing an oil rush as sea ice melts. The US refused to join other Arctic countries in describing climate change as a key threat to the region, as a two-day meeting of foreign ministers drew to a close on Tuesday in Ravaniemi, Finland.
Around 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihood, and about 2.6 billion people rely directly on agriculture. Deforestation, land degradation, and unsustainable management of ecosystems threaten those livelihoods and may contribute to resource-related conflicts and social unrest.