India Votes Against UNSC Draft Resolution Linking Security With Climate Action

Photos from the Climate March in Glasgow. Image used for representation.

(Photo Courtesy: Bahar Dutt)

India on Monday, 13 December, voted against a United Nations (UN) Security Council draft resolution that attempted to link climate change with global security challenges and stated, "India is second to none when it comes to climate action and climate justice, but the Security Council is not a place to discuss either issue.”

India's Permanent Representative to the UN TS Tirumurti was quoted as saying, “In fact, the attempt to (link climate change and security challenges) 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,” news agency PTI reported.

Explaining why India voted against the draft resolution, Tirumati argued, “Today's UNSC Resolution attempts to undermine the hard-won consensus which we reached in Glasgow. This resolution would only sow the seeds of discord among the larger UN membership.”

Nearly 200 countries had accepted the new climate agreement after last month’s COP26 summit in Glasgow.

The draft resolution had called on UN Secretary General Antonion Guterres to "integrate climate-related security risk as a central component into comprehensive conflict-prevention strategies."

Further, Tirumati explained that India “will always support real climate action and serious climate justice. We will always speak up for the interests of the developing world, including Africa and the Sahel region. And we will do so at the right place - the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),” PTI reported.

Asserting that the resolution is a step backward from the collective resolve to combat climate change, he added that the resolution sends a wrong message to the developing countries that instead of addressing their concerns and holding developed countries responsible for meeting their commitments under the UNFCCC, we are willing to be divided and side-tracked under the guise of security.

(With inputs from PTI.)