Scientific Evidence Supports UN Security Council Engagement with Climate Change

Sixteen years after the first United Nations Security Council debate on climate change and security, there is still no agreement on how the Council should engage with the issue. A major reason for the stalemate is enduring claims by a minority of Council members that there is little scientific foundation for connecting climate change with security concerns. Countering this view, we show that the scientific literature offers ample evidence that climate change can constitute a real threat to international peace and security. Establishing a shared understanding of the state of science would be an important step in facilitating an explicit climate security agenda in the Security Council.