The week before the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change talks open in Durban, South Africa, UN Secretary Ban ki-Moon told the Security Council (November 23) that climate change should be treated as a threat to global security.

“Climate change has the potential to reduce the availability of food and water, threaten biodiversity, raise sea levels, and disrupt weather patterns, exposing all of us to greater risk. Many regions of the world will be vulnerable to more intense and longer droughts, putting lives and livelihoods in peril.

In his address to the Security Council, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres echoed the appeal, warning that "The process of climate change and its role in reinforcing other global imbalances constitutes an important threat to peace and security.”

Instead of focusing on how many people might be displaced by climate change he said, “we should be addressing the more complex issue of the way in which global warming, rising sea levels, changing weather patterns and other manifestations of climate change are interacting with, and reinforcing, other global imbalances, so as to produce some very powerful drivers of instability, conflict and displacement."

Ban ki-Moon singled out the United States by reminding that Washington has reaffirmed the important role of the Durban climate change talks (November 28-December) adding, “We are committed to working with all countries to achieve a balanced and comprehensive outcome at the Framework Convention negotiations in Durban.”

The US Ambassador and Alternate Representative to the UN, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, responded that the US is also “committed to working with all countries to achieve a balanced and comprehensive outcome at the Framework Convention negotiations in Durban.”

However, doubts about the outcome of the climate change talks are already being raised in many quarters. Will the soon-to-expire Kyoto Protocol, committing nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to at least five percent below 1990 levels, be renewed?  Will nations accept a proposed Green Climate Fund to deliver billions of dollars from richer nations to poorer ones through carbon credits?

The US and Saudi Arabia have reportedly thrown a wrench into the works by failing to agree (November 24) to key aspects of a pledge by rich nations to provide $100 billion a year in climate cash by 2020, to be managed by the Green Climate Fund.

(Photo © DR)