UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations chief has warned that climate chaos and food crises are increasing threats to global peace, telling a high-level UN meeting that climate disasters imperil food production and “empty bellies fuel unrest.”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the UN Security Council to address the impact of food shortages and rising temperatures on international peace and security — a view echoed by many countries but not Russia.
“Climate and conflict are two leading drivers of our global food crisis,” the secretary-general said. “Where wars rage, hunger reigns – whether due to displacement of people, destruction of agriculture, damage to infrastructure, or deliberate policies of denial.”
“Meanwhile, climate chaos is imperiling food production the world over,” he said.
Guterres said the world is teeming with examples of “the devastating relationship between hunger and conflict.”
In war-torn Gaza, he said, no one has enough to eat and the tiny strip accounts for 80% of the 700,000 hungriest people in the world. After more than a decade of war in Syria, he said, 13 million Syrians go to bed hungry every night. And in Myanmar, prospects of ending hunger have gone into reverse because of conflict and instability, he said.
Simon Stiell, the United Nations climate chief, told the council that climate change is contributing to food insecurity and to conflict.
He said one in 10 people on the planet today already suffers from chronic hunger and if climate change accelerates, “it will become worse.”
Beth Bechdol, deputy director of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said 258 million people in 58 countries are facing high levels of food insecurity and over two-thirds of them — 174 million people — are at high hunger levels because of climate and conflict.