"Climate change is already disrupting our agriculture and ecosystems, our water and food supplies, our energy, our infrastructure, human health, human safety - now. Today. Climate change is a trend that affects all trends - economic trends, security trends. Everything will be impacted. And it becomes more dramatic with each passing year."
President of the United States, Barack Obama, speaking at the GLACIER Conference, 31 August 2015
“I want you to panic”. This was the message that 16 year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg gave to the World Economic Forum in Davos on 25 January, and in it she struck right to the intergenerational justice issue at the heart of the sustainability project.
The Hague Declaration on Planetary Security signed in 2017 outlines six action areas that require special attention, necessitating “concrete steps” at both global and local levels.
At COP24, India-based Sheela Patel from SPARC talked to Lou del Bello about how climate change affects people in informal settlements the most – and about strategies to address their special needs.
Climate change has been identified and recognized as a security issue and a threat multiplier by the international community, and climate security is now an integral part of security agendas in key international fora from New York to The Hague and Munich. As 2019 kicks off, action and implementation on climate security take centre stage.