UN chief sees clear link between climate change and security

UNITED NATIONS, March 28 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday saw a clear link between climate change and security.

"It is clear that natural disasters ... are causing massive displacement, and this displacement will inevitably increase migration flows. And, at the same time, impacting on productivity and agriculture, it will make hUNger much riskier and it will create factors of social instability," he told a news conference for the laUNch of an annual report of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

There are interesting analyses about the links between weather evolutions and political issues in history, he said.

"I recommend some interesting analyses about the weather evolution before the French Revolution and some analyses -- very interesting analyses -- about the impacts of droughts in relation to the Arab Spring," he said. "I'm not saying that this means that there was climate change in all these circumstances. ... But it is clear that there is a link, a very clear link, between climate and security, between climate and stability, between climate and well-being of populations."

The WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate 2018 states that 2018 was the fourth warmest year on record and that 2015-2018 were the four warmest years on record. Average global temperature reached about 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Guterres said the WMO report is a wake-up call. He asked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next 10 years and get to net zero emissions globally by 2050.

Without doing so, global warming will be irreversible, he said. "We are very close to the moment in which it will no longer be possible to come to the end of the century with only 1.5 degrees (of temperature increase above pre-industrial levels)."