India votes against the UN Resolution of Climate Change

In news– Recently, India voted against a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) linking climate to security.

Key Highlights-

The draft resolution was sponsored by Ireland and Nigeria.
The resolution sought to enable the Security Council to take up routine discussions on climate change from the perspective of its impact on peace and conflicts worldwide.
As of now, the appropriate UN forum to discuss all matters on climate change is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose more than 190 members meet multiple times every year.
Niger, which holds the UNSC presidency for December, organised a debate on December 9 titled ‘Maintenance of international peace and security: security in the context of terrorism and climate change.’
One of the objectives of the debate was to examine how terrorism and security risks could be linked to climate change.
India and Russia were the only countries to have opposed the draft resolution; China abstained.
India has stated that it was an attempt to shift climate talks from the UNFCCC to the Security Council and a “step backward” for collective action on the issue.
India also said that if the Security Council indeed takes over the responsibility on this issue, a few states will then have a free hand in deciding on all climate-related issues, which is clearly neither desirable nor acceptable,
It was also mentioned that the draft resolution would undermine progress made at Glasgow, where the latest round of talks under the UNFCCC, the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26), concluded in November.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)-

It is an international environmental treaty adopted and implemented by countries all around the world in 1994 to address the issue of climate change.
The 197 countries that ratified the agreement represent almost universal global involvement.
The UNFCCC is a Rio Convention, one of two opened for signature at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
Its sister Rio Conventions are the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) and the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
The UNFCCC sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change.
It meets yearly to discuss progress and take bold action. The Kyoto Protocol and more recent Paris Agreement are other landmark treaties that have emerged from these annual meetings.

Its objectives are:

Stabilize greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system
Stabilization should be within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change.
Ensure that food production is not threatened.
Enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.