Tracking the Security Council’s Practice on Climate, Peace and Security

The Security Council held its first dedicated meeting on the issue of Climate, Peace and Security in the form of an open debate on energy, security and climate on 17 April 2007 (see S/PV.5663). While Climate, Peace and Security is not a standalone agenda item of the Council, the Council has since held 16 other meetings primarily focused on this topic and has incorporated language on climate-related shocks and stressors in over 100 of its decisions, including mandates of peacekeeping operations and special political missions. Council members, as well as other Member States, have also convened ten “Arria-formula” meetings with a primary focus on Climate, Peace and Security.

In order to provide users with more insight into the Council’s growing engagement on Climate, Peace and Security, with the support of the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations, the Security Council Affairs Division (SCAD) and the Policy and Mediation Division (PMD), Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), have compiled three comprehensive datasets on the Council’s practice concerning climate-related shocks and stressors. Leveraging these datasets, SCAD and PMD have also developed an interactive dashboard to analyze and visualize the Council’s practice in this domain. These tools are intended to serve as resources for Member States, United Nations entities and the wider public to analyze and track trends in the Council and provide a repository of provisions, meetings and Arria-formula meetings on the topic that is updated on a quarterly basis.

The first dataset, Climate, Peace and Security in Security Council Decisions, lists provisions from Council decisions (resolutions, presidential statements and relevant exchanges of letters) containing references to climate-related shocks and stressors, which are identified through a keyword search of 25 terms. The second dataset, Formal Meetings of the Security Council on Climate, Peace and Security, contains information on the formal meetings of the Council that have been specifically dedicated to Climate, Peace and Security. The third dataset, Arria-Formula Meetings on Climate, Peace and Security, contains information on Arria-formula meetings focusing on this topic. Arria-formula meetings are organized by the members of the Council as a flexible and informal forum for enhancing their deliberations (see S/2017/507, para. 98).

The data reveals an increase in climate-related language in the Council’s decisions starting from 2017 and peaking in 2021, when 20 decisions and 23 provisions referred to climate-related shocks and stressors. The year 2021 also marked the highest number of formal Council meetings dedicated to Climate, Peace and Security. The majority of climate-related references in the Council’s decisions pertain to country-specific/regional agenda items, with most references found in relation to Somalia, Haiti, West Africa, and Sudan and South Sudan. In addition, decisions containing mandates for 18 peacekeeping operations and special political missions include language on climate-related shocks and stressors, with ten of these missions currently being active.

The Climate, Peace and Security Dashboard and its underlying datasets are innovative tools that provide data-driven insights into the Council’s practice on climate-related issues. They allow diverse stakeholders to analyze and monitor the Council’s evolving engagement on the rapidly changing Climate, Peace and Security landscape. Alongside SCAD’s other datasets and analysis tools, these resources also contribute to making the work of the Council more accessible to the wider public.