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

Abstract

The UNSC is the only institution with a mandate to maintain international peace and security. Since its creation, it has primarily adopted a traditional defensive, reactive understanding of security focused on violent conflict, war and military activity. While the UNSC has dealt with broader security topics (e.g. human security and the "Responsibility to Protect") and included climate change’s adverse impacts on stability in resolutions and mandates for field missions, official recognition of the multiple connections between climate change and other larger socio-ecological phenomena remains overdue despite several initiatives to address climate change in the UNSC since 2007.