To coincide with this and the UN General Assembly meeting September 14-27, Tipping Point North South’s Transform Defence project publishes its updated briefing:

‘Reset for the 21st century’: The Global Military and the United Nations

We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction yet the foreign and defence policies of nations around the world – especially the top 20 nations which allocate large sums to defence spending – are preoccupied with a plethora of adversarial and conventional threats on land, air, sea and space as well as with nuclear weapons, cyber weaponry and AI.

Meantime, climate change and pandemic are laying bare the magnitude and depth of the desperate state we are in. The post-pandemic global economy, coming not so long after the 2008 crash, will further compound this with ever greater poverty and inequality.

Alongside all past and present wars and conflicts, it seems we have also collectively declared war on ourselves and our planet. But no F-35 will stop New York City, Alexandria, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Venice, Bangkok, Mumbai and London going under water; no nuclear warhead will solve India and Pakistan’s disappearing water-table; no anti-terror AI will stop West Africa’s growing desertification.

The briefing pulls together the various ways in which the global military as whole- primarily the top 20 spenders and arms sellers- impact on the SDGs; on climate change itself;  and the intersection of both.

It explores:

• Why the impact of the global military on climate change demands much more attention and scrutiny at UN level
• Why we need to divert runaway military spending to make up the SDGs funding shortfall
• How a wider debate on definitions of ‘security’ and ‘defence’ is of benefit to the UN and citizens of the world
• Why a Security Council high level open debate is needed to bring all these inter-related issues together in order to frame an urgent new 21st century paradigm for security – that of ‘sustainable human safety’.

In light of the UN Secretary General’s call to ‘launch a reset for the 21st century,’ five recommendations are offered up as a way to explore a reset in relation to this much overlooked issue and in turn raise ever greater awareness, debate and action:

• Apply rigorous evidence-based value-for-money approaches to military spending
• Part-fund the $2-4 trillion SDGs 2021-2030 funding gap from escalating military budgets 2023-30 and beyond
• Create a new UNFCCC TOPIC ‘Carbon Neutral Peace and Defence’ and fill the ‘Knowledge Gap’ across UN and national processes on the global military’s greatly under-estimated carbon bootprint
• Make SDG 16 ‘Peaceful Societies’ much more challenging in its remit in relation to the global military and spending
• Hold a Security Council high-level open debate on the impact of the global military on climate change and under-development and the concept of ‘Carbon Neutral Peace and Defence

In 2020, the UN issued a report on the occasion of the UN’s 75th anniversary, in September 2020. In the Declaration (A/RES/75/1), Member States recognize that while there have been many achievements in the past 75 years, the world envisaged by the UN’s founders 75 years ago has not yet been realized: it is plagued by growing inequality, poverty, hunger, armed conflicts, terrorism, insecurity, climate change, and pandemics; people are forced to make dangerous journeys in search of refuge and safety; the LDCs are falling behind; and complete decolonization has not been achieved.

In 2021, the UN has mapped out how to take this forward with key proposals across the 12 commitments.

Recommendations from ‘Reset for the 21st century’: The Global Military and the United Nations connect with a number of items within the 12 proposals including:

2. PROTECT OUR PLANET

• • Commit to the 1.5-degree Celsius goal and net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner
  • Package of support to developing countries

3. PROMOTE PEACE AND PREVENT CONFLICTS

• • New agenda for peace
    • Invest in prevention and peacebuilding, including Peacebuilding Fund and Peacebuilding Commission

9. ENSURE SUSTAINABLE FINANCING

• • Support a Sustainable Development Goal investment boost, including through a last-mile alliance to reach those furthest behind

11. LISTEN TO AND WORK WITH YOUTH

• • Future generations
    • Summit of the Future in 2023
    • Ensure long-term thinking, including through a United Nations Futures Lab

12. BE PREPARED

• • On global public health
    • Empowered WHO
    • Stronger global health security and preparedness

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Climate change is increasingly a part of UN Security Council debates and publications and while it may not be accepted by all nations, the time is already upon us to up-end our 19^th and 20^th century models of security thinking.

We have to acknowledge climate change, global health, inequality/poverty reduction and conflict prevention as top priority, inter-related hard defence issues. We must call time on the ‘Cinderella’ status of these extreme threats to our collective human safety.

The IPCC’s ‘Code Red for Humanity’ speaks to this. The time has come to transform defence for sustainable human safety in the 21st century. The UN, in all its diversity, through all its departments, is at the heart of this much needed transformation