India and veto-yielding Russia on Monday blocked a controversial proposal aimed at authorising the UN Security Council to deliberate on climate change-related issues.
India’s permanent representative to United Nations TS Tirumurti said his country will always stand up for the interests of the developing world and it had no option but to veto the attempt made to “securitise” climate change.
“India is second to none when it comes to climate action and climate justice. But UNSC is not the place to discuss either issue. In fact, an attempt to do so appears to be motivated by a desire to evade responsibility in the appropriate forum and divert the world’s attention from an unwillingness to deliver where it counts,” Tirumurti said.
He further added that there should be no doubts about India’s commitment to combat climate change, adding that it will always “support real climate action and serious climate justice.”
Tirumurti also exhorted the developed world to provide a corpus of $1 trillion dollars as soon as possible, asserting that climate finance should be tracked with the same alacrity as climate mitigation. “The developed countries have fallen well short of their promises,” he added.
India’s protestation against the weaponisation of climate change found a common cause with Russia, which shared its apprehensions about the Council using its authority to pursue coercive measures to address challenges posed by global warming.
Russia backs India in its opposition to securitise climate change
Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenezia said Moscow could not support the resolution as it wanted to establish two different genres into one. Nebenezia also pointed out that climate had no links with global security.
“Billing climate change as a threat to international security diverts the council’s attention from genuine, deep-rooted reasons of conflict in the countries on the Council’s agenda,” Nebenezia said.
The Russian representative also added that securitising climate change would be largely convenient to countries that were actively helping engender conflicts or waged military activities in diversion from the Security Council’s mandate or simply don’t want to provide the necessary help to developing countries.
“It is particularly sad to see this attempt to shove in this draft resolution when there’s a clear lack of consensus among the members of the Security Council now when countries are trying to agree on how to implement the Paris Agreement in Glasgow, and also on measures that really are necessary to fight climate change,” Nebenzia contended.