Islands First

 

Pacific Islands call for Special Representative on Climate Change and Security



On Nauru, a Sinking Feeling
by President Marcus Stephen
New York Times Op-Ed

Pacific SIDS Statement to the Security Council

Needed: A UN Special Representative on Climate Change and Security
by Ambassador Marlene Moses
HuffingtonPost Op-Ed

NEW YORK On July 20, 2011, the Security Council adopted a Presidential Statement that recognizes the link between climate change and the maintenance of international peace and security. President Marcus Stephen of Nauru delivered a stirring statement at the open debate on behalf of the Pacific Small Island Developing States (Pacific SIDS), who have been calling for Council action on climate change for several years. This comes on the heels of an announcement by the International Energy Agency that emissions are at their highest level in history, despite ongoing international negotiations to reduce them.

The last two years have seen an unusual number of extreme weather events around the globe, including unprecedented flooding in the Pakistan that affected 20 million people and heat wave in Russia that wiped out 40 percent of their grain harvest. Projections for sea level rise have also seen upward revisions, with an emerging consensus of around a meter or more by 2100. This could lead the disappearance of some Pacific islands entirely and displace perhaps as many as 200 million people globally.

As a next step, the Pacific SIDS are calling for the appointment of a Special Representative on Climate and Security to take stock of the likely security impacts of climate change and report to the Security Council on an ongoing basis. A Special Representative could provide invaluable assistance to the countries most at risk, including conducting vulnerability assessments and developing plans to increase their resilience. Such a move would also bring much needed attention to the societal effects of climate change.

The Pacific SIDS would also like to see an assessment of the United Nations’ capacity to respond to climate change-driven crises. As the Secretary General concluded in his 2009 report, “the international community must anticipate and prepare itself to address a number of largely unprecedented challenges posed by climate change for which existing mechanisms may prove inadequate.”

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