UN urged to see climate change as security risk
UNITED NATIONS — An African woman whose people are nomads constantly searching for food and water told Security Council members on Wednesday they must consider climate change as a security risk that is fueling extremism, conflict and migration.
Hindou Ibrahim said in a speech to the council that climate change is affecting the daily lives of people in the vast Sahel region who depend on agriculture, fishing and livestock and are struggling to survive.
She said the scarcity of resources has fueled internal migration as well as migration through Africa to Europe, sparked local conflicts that become national and regional, and led to the growth of terrorist groups.
Ibrahim, an activist from Chad who co-chairs the International Indigenous People Forum on Climate, which promotes UN action on climate change, urged the council and the broader international community to take action to help them cope.
Ibrahim said nomadic pastoralists don’t know there is a Security Council where people think about peace around the world but they are living with climate change.
It is “deep humiliation” if a man in the nomadic community can’t feed his family because “his dignity is not respected”, Ibrahim said.
To preserve their dignity, she said, the options for nomadic men are grim: Either stay home and join a terror group and fight and die, or leave and risk dying in the sea.
“They do not have any choice, but you — you do have one because you choose to sit in the council. You choose to fight for our peace and security around the world,” Ibrahim told council members. “So you must consider climate change as a security risk. You must give them hope — the men, women, young people. But you must give them beyond hope because ... they deserve to be alive.”
The council meeting focusing on “climate-related security risks” was organized by Sweden, which holds the body’s rotating presidency this month.
“It is time for the Security Council to catch up with the changing reality on the ground,” said Margot Wallstrom, Swedish foreign minister. “It’s been seven years since we last debated climate and security. It is past time for us to deepen our understanding of how climate change interacts with drivers of conflict.”
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, who traveled with Wallstrom, told the council that “while the impact of climate change may be spread unevenly across different regions today, no country will be spared from its consequences in the longterm”.