New York: Russia vetoed, while India voted against, a United Nations security council resolution led by Ireland and Niger, which cast the climate crisis a threat to international peace and security, The Guardian reported.
Russia's vote has sunk the years-long effort to make global heating more central to decision making in council, the report said. India, Russia and China- who abstained- said the issue should remain with broader UN groups like the Framework Convention on Climate Change and added that adding climate change to the Security Council's ambit would deepen global divisions.
Russia said the resolution would turn a scientific and economic issue into a politicised question. It will divert the council's attention from genuine conflicts while envisaging itself with powers to intervene in any country in the world.
The proposal had suggested the incorporation of information on the security implications of climate change into the Security Council's strategies for managing conflicts, peacekeeping operations and political missions. It had asked the UN Secretary-General to make security risks related to climate a priority component of conflict prevention efforts and to report on how to address such risks in specific hotspots.
There have been similar discussions in the council since 2007 and had passed resolutions on destabilising effects of warming in particular places, but the latest one is the first on climate-related security risks as an issue of its own.
The resolution has said that natural disasters heat up social tensions and conflicts, undermining global peace, security and stability. One hundred thirteen countries- including 12 of the 15 members of the council- of the 193 UN member countries had supported it.
One of the proponents of the resolution, Ireland, reacted that the world has missed the opportunity to recognise the reality it is living at the moment.
The force of the veto can block the approval of a text, but it cannot hide the world's truth, Niger, the other one said. The meeting ended in a deal to limit global warming and broke some new ground but couldn't reach the UN's three big goals for the conference, The Guardian reports.