Climate and security: UN agenda-setting and the ‘Global South’

Abstract

At the United Nations (UN), frequent references are made to the ‘North–South’ divide, which presupposes a certain degree of coherence among two broad groups of states: developing countries – often referred to collectively as the ‘Global South’ – and advanced economies, the so-called ‘North’. Whether motivations and preferences among policy elites in UN agenda-setting processes turn out to be homogeneous or coordinated along the lines of this binary divide, however, is an empirical question. This paper hones in on the case of the climate and security agenda to examine the changing interests and positions of so-called ‘Global South’ actors. Drawing on official documents from UN bodies and member states, as well as interviews with diplomats, I argue that, despite a somewhat united front voiced through the Group of 77 when the topic of climate and security first arose at the UN, over the last 15 years a diversification of interests – resulting in part due to differences in experiences with and perceptions of climate change – has rendered ‘North–South’ framings rather unproductive in analysing multilateral positions on climate and security. At the same time, however, references to the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’ that acknowledge this heterogeneity still help to highlight underlying structural features that condition the engagement of both state and non-state actors with UN agenda-setting processes.

Keywords:

• United Nations
• Global South
• climate change
• conflict and security
• agenda-setting

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for the persistence and eagle-eyed edits of Sebastian Haug. This paper was written during a year-long fellowship with the United Nations University’s Center for Policy Research.

Disclosure statement

This research was carried out while the author had dual affiliations: at Plataforma CIPÓ, an independent think tank based in Brazil, and through a Senior Policy Fellowship at the United Nations University Center for Policy Research. The article expresses the author’s own views and, since UNU-CPR has independence from the greater UN system, there is no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 This agenda is not monolithic; different parts of the UN system have developed different names for it, for instance ‘climate and peacebuilding’ or ‘climate and prevention’. However, they all share a concern with the links across the climate and peace fields, and the main UN instrument for addressing these links bears the name Climate Security Mechanism.

2 Interview with Brazilian diplomat, March 2021. Brazil’s foreign policy elites refer to ‘South–South cooperation’, which is viewed as a more dynamic term than ‘Global South’.

3 For an example, see a statement by Mogens Lykketoft in IPI (2016).

4 In an interview in February 2021, a Brazilian diplomat stated that Brazil is reluctant to see further expansion in the working definition of security at the UNSC, especially due to the risks of securitisation. See also Coletta (2021).

5 Interview with Latin American diplomat, November 2020.

6 While national climate policy has been securitised, in its foreign policy India has been more cautious; see Sahu (2019).

7 CSEN meeting in Berlin, remarks under Chatham House Rules, 2019.

8 Maladaptation refers to intentional climate adaptation initiatives that result in increased vulnerability. See Juhola et al. (2016).

9 On underlying patterns of knowledge production, see also Tripathi (2021).

10 CSEN meeting under Chatham House Rules, Berlin, 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adriana Erthal Abdenur

Adriana Erthal Abdenur is a Brazilian policy expert and Executive Director of Plataforma CIPÓ, an independent, women-led research institute dedicated to issues of climate, governance and peace in Latin America and the Caribbean and across the Global South. She is also Senior Policy Fellow at the United Nations University’s Center for Policy Research (UNU-CPR) for the year 2021, working on innovations in global governance, and an adjunct lecturer in International Affairs at Sciences-Po Paris, where she teaches on climate and security and environmental crimes. In addition to the Climate Governance Commission, she is a member of the UN ECOSOC Committee on Development Policy (CPD) and the Strategic Advisory Board of Germany’s Weathering Risk initiative on Climate and Security. She earned her PhD in development sociology from Princeton University in 2006 and is the mother of two.