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.
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
The final batch of 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks purchased from the US arrived at Taipei Port last night and were transported to the Armor Training Command in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), completing the military’s multi-year procurement of 108 of the tanks. Starting at 12:10am today, reporters observed more than a dozen civilian flatbed trailers departing from Taipei Port, each carrying an M1A2T tank covered with black waterproof tarps. Escorted by military vehicles, the convoy traveled via the West Coast Expressway to the Armor Training Command, with police implementing traffic control. The army operates about 1,000 tanks, including CM-11 Brave Tiger
China on Wednesday teased in a video an aircraft carrier that could be its fourth, and the first using nuclear power, while making an allusion to Taiwan and vowing to further build up its islands, as it looks to boost maritime power, secure resources and bolster territorial claims. The video, issued on the eve of the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, featured fictional officers with names that are homophones of three commissioned aircraft carriers, the Liaoning (遼寧), Shandong (山東) and Fujian (福建). Titled Into the Deep, it showed a 19-year-old named “Hejian” (何劍) joining the group, sparking
BIG YEAR: The company said it would also release its A12 chip the same year to keep a ‘reliable stream of new silicon technologies’ flowing to its customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its newest A13 chip is to enter volume production in 2029 as the chipmaker seeks to hold onto its tech leadership and demand for next-generation chips used in artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance-computing (HPC) and mobile applications. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, also unveiled its A12 chip at its annual technology symposium in Santa Clara, California. The A12 chip, which features TSMC’s super-power-rail technology to provide backside power delivery for AI and HPC applications, is also to enter volume production in 2029, a year after the scheduled release of the A14 chip. The technology moves
RSS