UN Official Warns That Climate Change Poses Threat to Global Peace and Security

A senior UN official has claimed that climate change threatens the future international peace and security. Achim Steiner from the UN Environment Program said climate change would also 'exponentially' increase the scale of natural disasters.

Steiner warned that an increase in the frequency of natural disasters across the globe could prove a major challenge in the coming decades, the BBC reports.

He said recent crises, such as in Somalia, illustrate that 'our capacity to handle these kinds of events is proving a challenge, particularly if they occur simultaneously and start affecting, for instance, global food markets, regional food security issues, displacing people, creating refugees across borders'.

"Clearly the international community - if the scenarios in climate change for the future come true - will face an exponential growth of these kinds of extreme events," he added.

He expressed 'concern that possible adverse effects of climate change may, in the long run, aggravate certain existing threats to international peace and security'.

His comments came as the Security Council formally debated the environment for the first time in four years, with Germany pressing for the first-ever council statement linking climate change to global peace and security.

Advertisement

Source-ANI