Russia vetoed a draft UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution linking climate change to security threats. The Russian Mission to the UN tweeted: “In this draft resolution we see an attempt of some states to gain leverage in the #UNSC to impose a particular vision with regard to fulfillment of climate commitments and ultimately to initiate putting any country on the SC’s agenda under the #climate pretext.” Russia’s Permanent Representative, Vassily Nebenzia, explained, “We object to the creation of a new branch in the council’s work that asserts a generic and an automatic link between climate change and international security, turning a scientific and socio-economic issue into a political issue.”
Russia’s UN Mission objected that the proposed document was “coercing the council to take a one-dimensional approach to conflicts and threats to international peace and security, i.e. through the climate lens…. As a responsible member of the United Nations and its Security Council, the Russian Federation along with India and China does not share such an approach imposed by the Western nations that have already made a significant number of countries expecting assistance believe in it.” The West had gathered over 100 nations in support of the resolution. “We recognize the range of complex and intertwined challenges, including the impact of climate change, natural disasters, poverty, poor local governance that is mostly rooted in the colonial past, and terrorism threats that are an intolerable burden for some countries and regions. All those situations have their own specific characteristics.” But the ones pushing the document were “without readiness to discuss the root causes of the challenges” that the “vulnerable countries” are actually facing.
