By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Britain will try to convince reluctant U.N. Security Council members that global warming poses a threat to international peace and security when the body holds its first debate on climate change on Tuesday.
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett chairs the meeting on an issue which remains contentious for many governments, including the Bush administration that has fought mandatory caps on greenhouse gases emissions that spur climate change.
Ministers from two or three impacted nations which are not on the 15-member council are expected to attend the debate. They include the Maldives, one of 37 small island states that fear they may disappear under the waves as the Earth warms up.
Many members, including Russia, China and some developing nations, question whether the issue belongs in the Security Council, which deals only with threats to international peace and security, as they feel the council is increasingly encroaching on the work of other U.N. bodies.
No resolution is planned in this first round of speeches.
"We are lukewarm because of where it is discussed," Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said. "The Security Council is not the right place for the debate. We didn't take a vote but there was not much enthusiasm."
Britain made its case in a "concept paper," distributed to U.N. members on April 5, that suggested large parts of the world risked being uninhabitable by rising sea levels, a shortage of fresh water or land suitable for agriculture.
"Some estimates suggest up to 200 million people may be displaced by the middle of the century," as a result of migration from rural areas to cities and across international borders, thereby increasing "the potential for instability and conflict," the paper said.
PROVOKING CONFLICTS
Britain said conflicts were still likely to break out for a variety of other reasons, but said "the cumulative impacts of climate change could exacerbate these drivers of conflict, and particularly increase the risk to those states already susceptible to conflict."
Climate change is expected to complicate the existing competition for scarce energy resources, although if that change is gradual and managed it could lessen the risk of conflict, Britain said.
