Introduction

On Tuesday 17 April 2007, the United Nations Security Council held a day-long debate on the security implications of climate change; a debate convened by the UK Government, which held the presidential chair for the month of April. It was the first time this particular United Nations body had deliberated upon climate change, and the discussion focused on the impacts of climate change on potential drivers of conflict, such as population movements, border disputes and access to energy, water, food and other scarce resources.

The debate featured interventions from more than fifty national delegations, representing imperilled island nations and industrialised greenhouse gas emitters alike. The session was chaired by the British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, and was the culmination of two years of international diplomacy by the UK Government seeking to re-frame climate change as a matter of global security. A year earlier, at a state function in Berlin, Beckett had laid out the agenda. ‘Climate change is a serious threat to international security … so achieving climate security must be at the core of foreign policy’, and urged Europe to ‘make climate security one of the continent's greatest priorities’.

By bringing this debate to the Security Council, the UK Government was making a statement not just about the way climate change should be framed, but also about the way in which climate change should be governed. The United Nations Security Council is the organ of the UN charged with the maintenance of international peace and security.