Climate Protection and Nuclear Abolition: Developments in Humanitarian Disarmament and Human Rights Since the Release of The Climate-Nuclear Nexus

Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy | Sponsored by The Simons Foundation Canada

Introduction

The Foreword to The Climate-Nuclear Nexus, first published by the World Future Council in 2015, begins:

While humanity faces a range of interconnected transnational threats and crises in the 21st Century—including extreme poverty, hunger, pandemic disease and demographic change—climate change and the continued existence of nuclear weapons stand out as the two principal threats to the survival of humanity. On the long arc of human existence, both threats are relatively new to the scene, having only appeared over the last century. Both threaten the survival of life on earth as we know it and both are of our making.

The challenges posed by climate change and nuclear weapons have only grown more formidable in ensuing years. Nuclear weapon possessors are modernizing their arsenals and in some cases increasing them. US-Russian nuclear arms control negotiations have stalled, and multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations are non-existent. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the strong international reaction against it has severely disrupted already tenuous cooperation among major powers on matters of peace and disarmament. And, of course, climate change has grown impossible to ignore. A recent IPCC report cites an all-butunavoidable increase in global temperatures, sparking worldwide climate disasters we are already seeing: raging fires, harsher hurricanes, flash flooding, and more.

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