A Climate for Change in the UN Security Council? Member States' Approaches to the Climate-Security Nexus

Abstract

This research report is the first to systematically engage with the growing political agenda of the climate-security nexus and to place a particular focus on the relationship between the state and the only international organ with a mandate to maintain international peace and security: the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Discussions that have been ongoing since 2007, scattered governmental positions and the difficulty of achieving an overview of the various understandings, topics, concerns and responses of the UNSC member states in relation to the climate-security nexus all indicate a need to address this topic. This report therefore assesses and maps if and how the UNSC members acknowledge the linkages between climate change and security and how they position themselves with respect to these debates in the UNSC. With a large international network of interdisciplinary and country-specialized partner scientists, the analysis relies on an extensive spectrum of official primary sources from member state governments, various ministry strategies (such as those addressing security and climate change), UNSC documents and interdisciplinary academic literature on the climate-security nexus. It is located in the context of substantiated planetary climate emergencies and existential threats as well as urgent calls for action from the UN and member state representatives, scientific networks in Earth System Sciences and youth protests. Based on broad empirical research findings, this report concludes that all 15 current UNSC member states acknowledge the climate-security nexus in complex, changing and partly country-dependent ways. The report formulates an outlook and recommendations for decision-makers and scholars with a particular focus on strengthening the science-policy interface and dialogue and emphasizing the urgent need for institutional, multilateral and scientifically informed change. It also illustrates how essential it is for the UNSC to recognize and adapt institutional working methods to the interrelations of climate change and security and their effects as a cross-cutting issue.