“Some of the security challenges we face today are, by their nature, short-term and acute. Others are longer term, but no less pressing. Over the years, the United Nations, Governments and the people of the world have come to recognize climate change as a deadly peril to our ecosystems and, by that, to our security and, indeed, our survival. We may in many cases in life have a Plan B – but we simply have no Planet B.”
Remarks by Jan Eliasson, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the Munich Security Conference dinner to present the 2016 Ewald-Von-Kleist Award to H.E. Laurent Fabius and Christiana Figueres (Munich, 13 February 2016)
Photo: From left to right - Jan Eliasson (Deputy Secretary General, United Nations), Laurent Fabius (former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development, French Republic; President, COP21), Horst Seehofer (Minister-President, Free State of Bavaria), and Wolfgang Ischinger (Ambassador, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference). Credit: MSC / Kuhlmann.
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.