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ABSTRACT Climate change has increasingly come to be viewed as a security threat, as well as a 'threat multiplier'. The impact of this has become a cause for major international concern, especially in light of national contributions to climate change, by virtue of heavy industrial dependence on polluting processes. To address this issue, certain national lobbies have suggested that the United Nations Security Council should be made legislate on the issue, given its bearing on international security. This approach has been supported by nations and blocs like the United States, the EU, the Pacific Islands, etc. An alternate lobby, comprising states like India, have argued against this approach due to the UNSC's fractured mandate, and expressed their wish to keep deliberations more representative. This paper shall evaluate the context of climate change, the legal principles underlying it, and argue in favor of the Indian stand that the UNSC is not the appropriate institution to make policy decisions on this matter.
Keywords: India, EU, United Nations, climate change, international policy
INTRODUCTION
Conventionally speaking, climate change may not appear to be a security threat. It does not function as a sudden trigger for violent forms of conflict. Rather, it is a gradual process which results in slow changes in the environmental as well as the political landscape of the world.1 A contextual example would be the rise of the sea level in the Ganges Delta. This rise is not going to manifest as some sudden tsunami-like inundation, but rather in the form of an incremental loss of land to the sea over time. In this sense the effects of environmental changes are not direct causes of security problems. However, they do act as factors which increase the probability of trigger events and act as threat multipliers2 that amplify the impact of other threats to security. Moreover, due to the uncertainty regarding the scale of impact and time, one cannot say with confidence that this particular change will take place at a given time. As Richard Ullman notes, while climate change might not seem to be a security threat in the traditional sense, it has grave connotations for a realistic perception of it.3 Security can be conceptualized as being linked to the idea of survival, and climate...