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.
Tensions in the South China Sea increased last April when a Chinese coast guard ship sank a Vietnamese fishing boat near the Paracel Islands—a fiercely disputed territory in the South China Sea. Disputes over island territories in the region have endured for decades, with China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei all making overlapping territorial claims. The region is rich in natural resources and biodiversity, holding vast fish stocks and an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 cubic feet of natural gas.
Without a coordinated strategy to tackle flooding disasters beyond the traditional infrastructural measures and river water sharing agreements, South Asia’s woes will continue in the future.
As political and public narratives on COVID-19 shift towards the need to ‘build back better’, the pandemic continues to take a heavy toll for many. A new report by the Climate Security Expert Network (CSEN) shows how COVID-19 can exacerbate climate-related security risks.
With Argentina's ‘yes’, the Escazú Agreement is one step away from coming into force. What’s its status in each country?