Roundup: 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."

Fabius' remarks came as the first round of United Nations' climate talks this year started in Geneva on Sunday.

Negotiators and diplomats from around the world would gather at the Swiss city for the next six days to create a negotiating text for the new global climate agreement.

In the last UN climate summit held in Lima, Peru last year, negotiators elaborated elements which should be included in the agreement. But the document they passed, with nearly 40 pages and 2000 lines, was too long for top leaders to sign in Paris in December.

In Geneva, they must start the squeeze job.

Despite divergences among developed and developing countries over issues of responsibility sharing and finance supporting, analysts are optimistic towards the outlook of the new agreement.

In 2014, the European Union, United States and China revealed their plans to cut emissions and other measures to address the climate change.

While the EU said it would cut at least 40 percent of carbon emissions by 2030 compared with levels in 1990s, the U.S. promised to cut its emissions by 26 to 28 percent below the 2005 level by 2025, China also pledged to achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030, and increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20 percent by 2030.

More countries are expected to announce their contributions to the new global agreement throughout 2015. The first wave of announcements would be made before the end of March this year. Endit