THE announcement on April 17 that the UN Security Council will meet shortly to discuss climate change is a significant development. Taken in response to the proposal by Britain that climate change has serious implications for the security of nation-states and therefore deserves immediate consideration by the Security Council, the step becomes unprecedented because this will be the first time that the issue is discussed by the principal forum of the UN in which the five veto powers exercise decisive influence.

The move to place climate change on the Security Council’s agenda is a momentous shift on at least three grounds. First: because this is the first time that one of the veto-wielding members of the UN and one of the advanced G-8 countries, which together are responsible for the major volume of carbon dioxide emissions, has itself acknowledged the importance of climate change in the context of global stability. Second: because climate change in the larger context of the environment now becomes a priority in the formal global political agenda. So far, even as activism about the environment and growing dangers due to human actions have raised awareness and led to several preventive and curative measures, climate change has tended to be seen as part of a narrow, specialised, technocratic environmental agenda. Now, as part of the UNSC’s talk list, it becomes a principal political issue. Third: even if, according to conspiracy theory, the move is actually meant to divert attention from other critical issues such as Iraq, the sheer persistence of the other un-resolved conflicts and their growing intensity prevent their being down-graded in importance.

In an initial response to this move, the permanent representative of Pakistan at the United Nations commented on BBC TV on April 17 that the decision to discuss climate change in the Security Council had two negative aspects. One: discussion in the Security Council would, in effect, bypass or sideline other relevant UN agencies (such as the United Nations Environment Programme) or other institutions concerned with the issue of climate change. Two: that as the discussion would take place within the 15-member Security Council, the 177 other members of the UN would be marginalised in deliberations held inside the council.

Such a response from Pakistan is nothing less than shocking. It is grossly at variance with how millions of people at the grassroots of the environmental movement across the world and with how environmental leadership on an international level see this welcome development. Far from bypassing other UN agencies they see the act of bringing the subject of climate change to the Security Council as being a compelling way to engage the UN as a whole and its specialised agencies in particular more actively and more productively in the effort to adequately address the factors that are shaping climate change. And bringing the subject into the Security Council rather than into the General Assembly at this stage by no means results in disconnecting the bulk of UN member-states from the urgency of this issue. Indeed, the reverse is true.

It is hoped that Pakistan’s initial response is an individual comment rather than a considered policy position. International political diplomacy by foreign ministries, who otherwise render valuable professional service to their respective countries, is sometimes, unfortunately, remarkably insulated from ‘non-political’ or non-conventional security issues. For far too long, formal Security Council discourse is dominated only by military threats or by ostensibly conflictual disputes in which lethal weapons are used. Such a discourse is time-warped in a groove carved out decades ago.

Thanks to human greed and the heedless pursuit of growth and development, we have managed to make the very air we breathe a potentially fatal weapon of mass destruction through a severely distorted ozone layer.

There is a need for more humility in global diplomacy as much as there is a need for a newly-informed understanding of critical issues such as global warming and climate change.

If the comment made by the permanent representative of Pakistan at the UN had come from the neo-con-dominated US government, it would have been predictable and understandable. Coming from Pakistan which has otherwise often taken progressive and even innovative positions on issues of global concern (e.g. co-initiating and co-chairing the planning process for the World Summit on Children in 1989-90) the comment becomes extremely disturbing and non-reflective of how a developing country like Pakistan should view this welcome change.

Human beings who survive in desperation below or just about at par with the poverty line remain the majority of the world’s 6.2 billion people. They are already paying – and continue to pay – the highest price for the manifold effects of climate change.

Prolonged erratic droughts. Rising sea levels that swallow coastal lands. Un-seasonal rainfall that damages subsistence crops. Disrupted eco-systems. Lost livelihoods. The adverse fallout is vividly clear for the security of states already barely able to cope with swelling cities, unemployed millions, growing crime and violence. Pakistan should be at the forefront of welcoming this long-overdue climate change within the sterile chamber of the Security Council, instead of expressing doubts about this step, however substantive or merely symbolic it eventually becomes.

(The writer is global Vice-President of IUCN – The World Conservation Union)

IT has been one month since Bob Woolmer’s suspicious death, yet the event is still shrouded in confusion. Pakistan’s cricket team has been subjected to DNA tests and fingerprinting, key players and managers have been questioned and re-questioned, and there has been talk of extradition treaties amid diplomatic manoeuvres.

For a while everyone was expecting the worst. Now we don’t know what to expect. You cannot help feeling that, under the circumstances, Pakistan has become an easy target for insult and ridicule.

Since the announcement that Woolmer’s death is being treated as murder, Pakistan cricket has been called a snake-pit, and the Pakistan cricket team the most dysfunctional group in world sport. Such name-calling would normally be considered slanderous, and it can be fairly asked how much of this is a media mob frenzy.

One of the problems is that information related to Woolmer’s death has come across like a wayward opening spell with the ball sprayed all over the place. Too many questions — many of them of a medical or technical nature such as when did he die or what has the autopsy revealed, how certain is the theory of strangulation and was he really poisoned – still remain unanswered.

Woolmer was officially pronounced dead at the hospital at 12:15pm on Sunday, March 18, but the precise time of death is still ambiguous because the reported timeline is sketchy. He is believed to have retired to his room by 7:00pm the previous evening. At some point – midnight in some reports – he ordered room service, and appears to have consumed the meal. Around 3:00am he sent an email to his wife. Then, at 10:45am the following morning, he was found on the floor by a maid.

It is not even clear if he was alive when first discovered. Some reports have suggested he was ‘unconscious’ when found, which would narrow the time window of his death considerably, but this remains unconfirmed.

Everyone was looking to the autopsy for some clear answers, but even this has produced a difference of opinion. The first pathologist decided that the autopsy was ‘inconclusive,’ but a second pathologist concluded that death had occurred from manual strangulation. Despite the difference of opinion, the second pathologist’s conclusion was formally announced in a Jamaican police press conference and the crime of murder was invoked.

The conclusion that Woolmer was strangulated to death is based on the finding that the hyoid bone in his neck was fractured. Forensic medical reasoning is not an exact science, however, and this is not as clear-cut as it seems. A review of the medical literature confirms that cases of hyoid bone fracture from causes other than manual strangulation, although rare, are well recognized.

For example, a report from Germany in the journal Forensic Science International concludes that “laryngo-hyoid fractures should not be overestimated as unequivocal indication of neck compression and may well be caused by falls, even at ground level.” What this means, at a minimum, is that the finding of hyoid bone fracture does not automatically point to strangulation.

Typically, strangulation leaves a variety of evidence on the body. Abrasions, bruises, or fingernail marks on the throat; damage to other structures in the neck, such as the trachea (wind-pipe), larynx (voice-box), blood vessels, and soft tissues; biting of the tongue; and minute haemorrhages in the conjunctiva (white membrane) of the eyes, are all potential signs of strangulation that can be recognized by the forensic pathologist.

Some reports have mentioned struggle marks on Woolmer’s neck but they remain unconfirmed.

In any case, the choice of manual strangulation as a means for killing a strapping fellow like Woolmer is puzzling. If it was a targetted killing, several other means could have been more reliable and efficient. If it was a brawl that got out of hand, there should have been other signs of struggle, but reports have acknowledged there is very little evidence of a struggle.

One possible explanation for a lack of struggle is that Woolmer had been chemically subdued. The latest toxicology reports suggest he may have been, but the details are unconfirmed. Toxicology studies are technically demanding.

According to a leading chemical pathologist, it is relatively easy to conduct screening tests, but confirming the presence of a specific poison requires an expensive technology called gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, which is not widely available. Quite often, a positive screening test can be a false alarm and yields nothing on GC-MS.

There have been suggestions that Woolmer was poisoned with aconite – a highly toxic herbal product that causes severe vomiting and death from respiratory failure – but at present this is just a theory.

There are inconsistencies here.

Woolmer is believed to have known his attackers, yet his body was found naked but for a towel (some reports said he wore an undergarment). If he knew his attackers, you expect he would be clothed to greet them. Being naked, on the other hand, suggests an element of surprise or, if anything, privacy.

The presence of diarrhoea and vomit around the body is more in keeping with a natural medical mishap than strangulation. Although faeces may be expelled during asphyxiation, vomiting is impossible if the neck is so tightly crushed even air isn’t getting through.

The nearby presence of Woolmer’s glucometer (portable blood sugar-checking machine), mentioned in some reports, also indicates he may have been experiencing symptoms of illness. Woolmer was known to have diabetes and by some accounts also suffered from sleep apnoea, to the point of requiring a breath-assisting device during sleep. These are established risk factors for a catastrophic medical event such as a heart attack. If a heart attack immediately precedes death, there may be no evidence of it on autopsy.

The coroner’s inquest – a legal procedure in which a judge assisted by a jury will evaluate the evidence on the charge of murder – is due to begin on April 23, and will hopefully resolve much of this.

Certainly, data currently in the public domain may be consistent with death from natural causes (such as a diabetic catastrophe, or emotional anguish leading to a heart attack). The process of analyzing Woolmer’s death needs to be as objective and transparent as possible. We don’t need any more victims.