Over the last century, we have made progress in addressing humanitarian and development challenges. However, there are significant risks to our continued progress. Our commitment to strong, multilateral responses to major crises is challenged when we need it most. At the same time, conflicts are increasing in number, becoming more protracted and fragmented, and pushing unprecedented numbers of people into humanitarian need.
I believe climate change—which poses an existential threat to all humanity—is playing an increasingly central and destructive role right across the range of issues that the United Nations strives to address. As Chair of The Elders, I am dismayed that we could reverse the development gains of the last 100 years, not because we cannot act, but because we will not act. The need to act and act fast is the message of marchers and school children that we have seen in recent months. We hear these voices not only in the West. While the links between climate, poverty, fragility, and insecurity are only beginning to be fully understood, there is little doubt that the links exist—mostly for those who are living this reality every day. As Hindou Ibrahim, an activist from Chad (and a good friend), told the Security Council last year:
“My people are living climate change. Climate change has an impact on their daily lives and gives them insecurity. When they sleep at night, they dream that they will wake up the next day and be able to get food or water for their children. They also dream that if someone gets to the resources before they do, they will have to fight for them.”
Climate change is not just an issue of atmospheric science or plant conservation; it is fundamentally about human rights and the protection of people. When we think about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the core principles it promotes, it is abundantly clear that the impacts of climate change are rapidly undermining the full enjoyment and full range of human rights. It is quite often the most vulnerable who are facing loss of their right to life, to food, to safe water, to shelter, and to health.
Last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report clearly outlines that our basic human rights stand to be eroded due to the climate crisis: risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth are all projected to increase with global warming at 1.5°C and to increase further to a dangerous level with 2°C.
In 2016, as the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for El Niño and Climate, I saw for myself, with Macharia Kamau, who was also a Special Envoy for El Niño and Climate, how existing phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña are compounded by climate change. And, I saw the real humanitarian consequences for poor people—particularly for women.
The evidence is now building; the number of people going to bed and waking up hungry is on the rise. The 2019 Global Report on Food Crises tells us that climate and natural disasters pushed 29 million people into situations of acute food insecurity in 2018, mostly in Africa. Unpredictable seasons in rural areas are dramatically affecting rural people’s—especially women’s—livelihoods, undermining the ability of farmers to grow and provide food, and the ability of communities to access health and education services. Likewise, the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events as a result of climate change is leading to an increase in displacement of people and communities—23.5 million people in 2016 according to the World Meteorological Organization.
I was very moved recently when my fellow Elder, Graça Machel, described the devastation she saw after a recent visit to Beira in her beloved country Mozambique. Mozambique has now been hit by another cyclone, Kenneth. These people do not have a plan B, do not have insurance, do not have reserves that they can look to. They are just devastated…devastated and in poverty, not really knowing where to turn. While estimates of the number of people likely to be displaced as a result of climate change vary, the stark reality is that they will be multiples of those we see today.
The challenge of climate change is not only about droughts and desertification displacing people in Africa. Sea level rise threatens whole communities living in small island developing states. Island countries such as the Maldives and Kiribati are facing the loss of their sovereign islands with rising sea levels. As a result, they are championing the issue of climate change as a human rights challenge, connected to the displacement of people and the potential loss of life, as well as the right to low-carbon development. We must remember that the people and countries bearing the brunt of food insecurity, social instability and forced displacement have not contributed to the main cause of climate change. That is the injustice of climate change. This fact embodies the injustice and the necessity to recapture global justice through more ambitious climate action.
As the President of the IFRC said recently, climate change is already making emergency response efforts around the world more difficult, more unpredictable and more complex. However, we cannot only consider the direct effects of climate change. By undermining livelihoods, eroding food and water security, driving displacement, increasing competition for scarce resources, and increasing economic and gender inequalities, climate change acts as a threat multiplier, pushing already vulnerable and fragile societies over the edge.
With few options available to individuals, particularly young men, economic hardship and marginalization can open the door for the predatory activities of violent extremists in search of recruits.
While no armed conflict has one single driver, there is an increasingly strong body of evidence that suggests that climate change, interacting with other factors, such as political, economic, and social conditions, is a major contributing factor. Armed conflict is now the main reason that nearly 140 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection this year—most in a small number of countries like Syria, Yemen, and South Sudan.
The role that climate change plays in crises is context-specific. Climate and insecurity interact in already vulnerable contexts and create a vicious cycle leading to increased humanitarian need. As a paper from the Overseas Development Institute and the Red Cross Movement pointed out, “the most severe impacts of climate change are not necessarily in areas exposed to the greatest changes in climate, but in places where people’s capacities to cope with these changes are lacking.”
Individuals and communities affected by conflict and fragility lack access to social protection or necessary institutional supports. As a result, their resilience is undermined and their ability to adapt reduced. Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, told the Security Council last year: “Fragile countries are in danger of becoming stuck in a cycle of conflict and climate disaster.” The most frequently cited example of this phenomenon is the situation in the Lake Chad basin region, where an environmental catastrophe—the shrinking of Lake Chad by 90%—has had profound economic and social implications. The shrinking of the lake was accompanied by a shrinking of economic opportunities, an increase in vulnerability, and the rise of instability and violent extremism—most notably, the Boko Haram insurgency. Local leaders, such as Hindou Ibrahim, are in no doubt about the link between these two events.
Disasters are not the only climate change-related developments that affect security. I believe that we must also broaden our perspectives when we consider what we mean by insecurity and the potential for a humanitarian crisis. So-called ‘conflict’ can manifest at all levels; intra-national conflict, or conflict between major ethnic groups, is worthy of consideration, especially as it leads to displacement, which further exacerbates climate vulnerability and plays havoc with ecosystems. Moreover, lower-level conflict can often have a negative impact, especially placing different kinds of strain on humanitarian systems, including in zones or regions of the world not traditionally associated with conflict.
This reality was acknowledged by the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum, where they declared, “Climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and well-being of the peoples of the Pacific.” The Pacific