How can UN organs respond to climate-security risks?

The impact of climate change on peace and conflict is a critical foreign policy challenge. Climate change compounds existing security risks, creating new and stronger pressures on communities and governments, making peace harder to maintain, achieve and sustain. Adequate responses to these challenges will involve the entire UN system and incorporate action from multiple organs throughout the conflict cycle – long before the outbreak of open violence, in reconstruction efforts as well as peacebuilding. 

This text contains an information graphic on page 4, which shows some of the possible measures to tackle climate security risks for the General Assembly, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council. Furthermore, the graphic links these actions to the different phases of a conflict cycle and identifies those phases during which the measures are most likely to achieve their desired outcomes.

This brief outlines the different sets of tools available to the organs in more detail and offers the rationale for implementing these actions in the future.