France stresses urgency to address climate change as security threat
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in Munich on Sunday that climate change was also a security threat and deserved urgent collective responses.
In a debate session in the ongoing annual Munich Security Conference, where most of the agenda was dedicated to security threats such as Ukraine crisis and terrorism, Fabius told the audience that climate destruction had also made massive effects on global security.
"Climate destruction is not only an environment issue, it is a security issue," he said, accusing climate change of undermining development, causing population displacement and fueling conflicts.
Fabius said climate destruction was caused by the massive use of fossil fuels which has been a major component of security crisis.
Reducing the carbon intensity of economies and developing renewable resources, he said, would help equalize access to energy and thus reduce tensions, inequalities and dependencies.
France would host a climate summit in December this year when a new global agreement on addressing the climate change was scheduled to be signed in Paris.
Fabius said not only emissions cutting, but also adaption, or assistance to population whose daily lives were impacted by the climate change, should play a key role in the new agreement so that the people "are not forced to turn to despair and violence."
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