Graham Kennedy: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: General Debate[Sitting date: 01 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:4992. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Today New Zealand assumes the presidency of the United Nations Security Council for the first time in 21 years and only the sixth time since 1945. It is a matter of considerable global responsibility. This House should convey its best wishes to the delegation for a successful job. What might New Zealand aspire to achieve as president that might be in some way unique? There will be the usual tasks of the council involving United Nations peacekeeping missions around the world. It may be appropriate for the council to discuss the latest independent review of peacekeeping the Horta report. This essentially updates the Brahimi report of 15 years ago. It makes sobering observations about the current effectiveness of UN peacekeeping including the need to distinguish between peacekeeping when there is a peace to keep and combat when there is not. We shall not solve this fundamental problem in the course of July 2015. However what we might be able to do is add value on the issue of climate change and in a creative way that the Government may not quite yet have in mind.New Zealand is convening an open debate on 30 July on the security of small Island States. It took effort to persuade the council to focus on small States but it was wise to do so. We look forward to the debate because the focus on the security of small Island States may come to define the council’s engagement with climate change in a way that New Zealand has not anticipated. I refer to the relationship between the onset of climate change and the council’s responsibility for international peace and security. Under the United Nations Charter the council has primary responsibility to maintain international peace and security. This includes determining any threat to peace and formulating measures in response. In recent years the council has broadened its scope of what constitutes such a threat including internal conflict terrorism unconstitutional regime change weapons of mass destruction and even health epidemics. The way is therefore open to identify climate change as a threat to international peace and security.In fact the council has considered this. It first addressed the issue in 2007 without making any statement. In 2009 the Secretary-General advised the assembly that in his view climate change does constitute a threat to international peace. In 2011 the council issued a presidential statement that climate change is a “risk multiplier”. It stopped short of saying that is constitutes a threat thereby avoiding any responsibility for action or mandating itself binding powers. In 2013 it organised an Arria meeting on climate. As is the norm no statement was made that day but to quote the leading scientist who gave the briefing to the council: “The council is where the world powers are convening and taking hard decisions so it would be good if its members put their full weight behind the quest for a global agreement.”The time has come to get this over the line. It is time now that the Security Council formally declared climate change to be a threat to international peace and security thereby mandating itself to take whatever measures are necessary to avert global danger. The presence of our island neighbours in the chamber will convey to the council the existential threat that exists for them and through them for all of humanity. I appeal to the Government to draft a presidential statement for the open debate on 30 July declaring climate change to be a threat to international peace and security.