United Nations, Feb. 13 (EFE) – “Empty bellies fuel unrest,” Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Tuesday at a session dedicated to addressing the relationship between the climate crisis, food insecurity, and armed conflicts in the world.
The meeting was convened by Guyana, the current president of the Security Council, and attended by the country’s president, Mohamed Irfaan Ali.
Before the meeting began, Ali made a statement, accompanied by the representatives of ten other Council countries, but not by Russia and China, which usually oppose discussions of climate issues.
Guterres recalled that climate and armed conflict are the main causes of acute food insecurity for 174 million people in 2022, citing among its most obvious manifestations floods and droughts that destroy crops, changes in the oceans that disrupt fisheries, or land and groundwater degradation.
Among the countries most affected by hunger, conflict, and climate crises are Syria, Burma, Gaza (Palestine), Haiti, Ethiopia, and Sudan, all places where millions of people have become dependent on international aid, the Secretary-General said.
But Guterres criticized the “grotesque disparity” in a world in which “globally almost a third of food is wasted while hundreds of millions of people go to bed hungry every night.”
In addition, he stressed that, “food consumption, production, and distribution account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.”
Guterres also pointed out that “it is distressing to see governments spending heavily on arms, while starving budgets for food security, climate action, and broader sustainable development”. EFE
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