Climate change could spawn a new era of conflicts around the world over water and other scarce resources unless more is done to curb greenhouse gas emissions, UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said on Thursday.
She said climate-driven conflicts were already under way in Africa. Underlying the Darfur crisis, she said, was a "struggle between nomadic and pastoral communities for resources made more scarce through a changing climate."
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute in London, Beckett quoted evidence that a similar conflict was brewing in Ghana where Fulani cattle herdsmen are reportedly arming themselves to take on local farmers in a confrontation over water and land as climate change expands the Sahara desert. The foreign secretary said the Middle East -- with 5 percent of the world's population but only 1 percent of its water -- would be particularly badly affected, with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq particularly hard hit by a drop in rainfall.
She said the Nile could lose 80 percent of its flow into Egypt, a country which would also be threatened by rising sea levels in the Nile delta, its agricultural heartland, where flooding could displace two million people, threatening internal stability.
"Resource-based conflicts are not new. But in climate change we have a new and potentially disastrous dynamic," she said.
Her speech echoed a similar warning from the European commission in January that global warming could trigger regional conflicts, poverty, famine, mass migration and the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.
The British government has this year attempted to focus global attention on climate change as a security threat, and Beckett used British chairmanship of the UN security council last month to convene the council's first debate on the issue.
"It requires a whole new approach to how we analyze and act on security," Beckett said. "The threat to our climate security comes not from outside but from within: we are all our own enemies."
She compared the struggle to contain climate change to the Cold War, which also had to be fought on diplomatic, economic, political and cultural fronts. She said public and private sectors would have to cooperate to ensure the bulk of investment in the energy sector by 2030 was spent on low carbon and energy efficient options.
This week scientists, diplomats and activists met in Bonn to start formulating a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which expires in 2012.
GET TO SAFETY: Authorities were scrambling to evacuate nearly 700 people in Hualien County to prepare for overflow from a natural dam formed by a previous typhoon Typhoon Podul yesterday intensified and accelerated as it neared Taiwan, with the impact expected to be felt overnight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, while the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration announced that schools and government offices in most areas of southern and eastern Taiwan would be closed today. The affected regions are Tainan, Kaohsiung and Chiayi City, and Yunlin, Chiayi, Pingtung, Hualien and Taitung counties, as well as the outlying Penghu County. As of 10pm last night, the storm was about 370km east-southeast of Taitung County, moving west-northwest at 27kph, CWA data showed. With a radius of 120km, Podul is carrying maximum sustained
Tropical Storm Podul strengthened into a typhoon at 8pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with a sea warning to be issued late last night or early this morning. As of 8pm, the typhoon was 1,020km east of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving west at 23kph. The storm carried maximum sustained winds of 119kph and gusts reaching 155kph, the CWA said. Based on the tropical storm’s trajectory, a land warning could be issued any time from midday today, it added. CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said Podul is a fast-moving storm that is forecast to bring its heaviest rainfall and strongest
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday criticized the nuclear energy referendum scheduled for Saturday next week, saying that holding the plebiscite before the government can conduct safety evaluations is a denial of the public’s right to make informed decisions. Lai, who is also the chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), made the comments at the party’s Central Standing Committee meeting at its headquarters in Taipei. ‘NO’ “I will go to the ballot box on Saturday next week to cast a ‘no’ vote, as we all should do,” he said as he called on the public to reject the proposition to reactivate the decommissioned
TALKS CONTINUE: Although an agreement has not been reached with Washington, lowering the tariff from 32 percent to 20 percent is still progress, the vice premier said Taiwan would strive for a better US tariff rate in negotiations, with the goal being not just lowering the current 20-percent tariff rate, but also securing an exemption from tariff stacking, Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said yesterday. Cheng made the remarks at a news conference at the Executive Yuan explaining the new US tariffs and the government’s plans for supporting affected industries. US President Donald Trump on July 31 announced a new tariff rate of 20 percent on Taiwan’s exports to the US starting on Thursday last week, and the Office of Trade Negotiations on Friday confirmed that it
RSS