India today voted against the United Nations Security Council’s draft resolution that would enable the Security Council to work towards and take important decisions, action against climate change. The draft proposed to make a formal space inside UNSC work towards solutions to climate change. India along with Russia and China appealed against it considering that this would lead to the undermining of other organisations and also lead to security threats for other Nations.
Under the United Nations, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the only organisation that works against climate change. Currently, UNFCCC has 190 members. The members meet up regularly over the course of the year to discuss and lay down guidelines on how change should be brought in and for the countries to work on it.
The primary reason why India is opposing the move is that this will lead to undermining the UNFCCC’S powers and process. This will also lead to division among the UN members. This will also adversely affect the progress of actions against climate change.
The permanent representative of India at the UN T S Tirumurti said that this draft resolution could also change the power and status of countries. In the end, he said that it had the potential to sow the seeds of discord among the other UN membership. He said, “This draft resolution is a step backward from our collective resolve to combat climate change. It seeks to hand over that responsibility to a body that neither works through consensus nor is reflective of the interests of the developing countries.
‘So let us be clear about the issues. Today, climate change decisions are sought to be taken out of the wider international community represented in the UNFCCC and given instead to the Security Council,” he said. “Ironically, many UNSC members are the main contributors of climate change due to historical emissions. If the Security Council indeed takes over the responsibility on this issue, a few states will then have a free hand in deciding on all climate-related issues. This is clearly neither desirable nor acceptable’, he added.
Today, India🇮🇳 voted against a #UNSC draft resolution that attempted to securitize climate action and undermine the hard-won consensual agreements in Glasgow.
Watch Explanation of Vote by Permanent Representative @ambtstirumurti ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/jXMLA7lHnM
— India at UN, NY (@IndiaUNNewYork) December 13, 2021
This resolution was sponsored by Ireland and Nigeria. However, the resolution could not pass as one of the veto powers Russia voted against the move. This draft resolution is being seen as one of the threats to the collective membership of the UN.
Linking national security, world security and climate action is not the right way to go about this is the opinion of India on the matter.
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