HANDBOOK
This section is based on the publication Move the Nuclear Weapons Money: A Handbook for civil society and legislators published by IPB, PNND and WFC.
Table of contents
3. Nuclear weapons versus the Sustainable Development Goals
On 25 September 2015, member countries of the United Nations adopted a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. This was followed by the adoption of a specific plan of action to address climate change at the COP 21 Conference in Paris in December 2015. The 16th SDG has a special relevance, calling for ‘peaceful and inclusive societies’.
Achievement of the SDGs and implementation of the COP 21 will depend on political will and the allocation of sufficient resources. Progress on nuclear disarmament would assist in achieving these goals in three key ways, through:
Re-allocation of financial, scientific, intellectual, political and personnel resources from nuclear weapons to SDG implementation;
Reduction of tensions and conflicts currently perpetuated by nuclear threat postures, and the increased cooperation that would occur from joint verification of nuclear disarmament agreements, which would enhance the cooperation and trust required for SDG implementation;
Ending the production and testing of nuclear weapons which create catastrophic impacts on the environment for current and future generations.
In addition, the use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict would cause even greater human and environmental consequences, and would likely trigger a global nuclear holocaust from which there would be zero chance of achieving the SDGs.
The threats to our planet – of climate change, poverty and war – can only be overcome by nations and the global community working in cooperation – something not possible while nations maintain large and expensive militaries and threaten to destroy each other.
When one year of global military spending equals six hundred years of the UN operating budget, are we truly committing ourselves to a world with increased cooperation and reduced conflicts?
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
The relationship between disarmament and development has been widely recognized for many decades. Article 26 of the United Nations Charter, for example, places an obligation on the UN Security Council to facilitate disarmament “in order to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources.”
However, the vested interests of the permanent members of the Security Council – the world’s largest weapons manufacturers and exporters – have so far prevented concrete action. Costa Rica raised this issue in the Security Council in 2008, but did not have sufficient support to achieve anything concrete.
In September 2015, the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev made a specific proposal to the UN General Assembly that every country contribute 1% of their military spending to fund the Sustainable Development Goals. However, this proposal has not yet been picked up by other countries or adopted by the UN.
It is therefore up to civil society, working in cooperation with legislators, to highlight the connection between nuclear disarmament and sustainable development, and to build cooperation between the nuclear disarmament and SDG communities. In this way we can build a more powerful movement, develop traction on international initiatives to move the money to SDGs, and ensure success of the core goals – SDG implementation and nuclear abolition.
The 100 billion dollars spent annually on nuclear weapons should be channeled instead to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the urgent climate change adaptation needs of the most vulnerable countries.
HANDBOOK
This section is based on the publication Move the Nuclear Weapons Money: A Handbook for civil society and legislators published by IPB, PNND and WFC.