British PM names envoy to address climate security risks at Antalya summit

Sea temperatures in the central Pacific are more than three degrees above normal, a figure that Prime Minister Dalton Tagelagi of Niue cited on Thursday as a warning of what lies ahead if emissions are not cut immediately. He spoke from Antalya, Turkey, during the second day of a U.N. leaders’ summit where the gap between scientific data and political action came into sharp focus.

The United Kingdom announced the appointment of Madeleine Alessandri as its first special representative for climate security. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham declared the role a necessary step to treat the warming planet as a core state concern rather than a distant environmental problem. “Climate is a national security issue,” Burnham said. “The climate crisis is not a distant threat. It is upon us all now devastating lives and livelihoods everywhere.”

The UK government identified the need for this envoy earlier this year in an assessment noting that climate-driven damage to ecosystems could disrupt food supplies and fuel conflict. The report highlighted that the island nation imports about 40% of its food, making it vulnerable to supply chain shocks caused by extreme weather. Burnham stated that Britain will place climate resilience high on its agenda when it assumes the G20 presidency next year.

Island leaders at the summit described the situation as existential. Alix Sebastien Pillay, vice president of Seychelles, said the country is experiencing millions of dollars in damage from storms and floods. Despite contributing few greenhouse gases to global warming, Pillay argued that climate action is a matter of national security and survival. “Climate recovery must not come at the expense of our development or push vulnerable nations further into unsustainable debt,” he said.

An independent report from the Climate Action Tracker released during the talks found that aggregated climate action has stalled for five consecutive years. The organization noted that positive and negative actions have canceled each other out since the 2015 Paris Agreement. The report stated that the world is now headed toward an irrecoverable overshoot of the 1.5-degree Celsius warming limit adopted in Paris.

Sarah Heck, lead author of the report and a climate policy analyst at Climate Analytics, said that even if nations fulfill all their current promises, the globe will end the century 2.6 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times. She emphasized that countries need to strengthen their targets, noting that new pledges made last year failed to move the needle on projected warming.

Leaders from developing nations pressed for financial support to manage these risks. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan pointed to the 2022 floods that submerged over a third of the country, causing thousands of deaths and more than $30 billion in damage. He called for real action and solidarity rather than words. “The future we feared has become the present we are living,” Sharif said.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley criticized the current state of climate financing, stating that promised pledges are now 70% below previous levels. “Pledges are not payments,” Mottley told her fellow leaders. “So the applause in this room, let us be clear, has never rebuilt a single home in any country.”

President Hilda Heine of the Marshall Islands warned against the continued expansion of fossil fuels. She recalled watching coral in her nation go from bright and lush to white with bleaching earlier this year. “Every new oil well drilled, every piece of coal extracted is a threat to my country’s future,” Heine said. “No one has the right to pollute their neighbors.”

The summit continues in Antalya with leaders addressing specific mitigation strategies and funding mechanisms. The UK’s new envoy will work to coordinate security responses to climate impacts, a role that few other nations have formally established.