Worldwide, the number of people facing acute food insecurity is 345 million. That’s more than triple the number estimated prior to the pandemic in 2019. As global hunger reaches crisis levels, the World Food Programme warns that climate change is a key factor causing food insecurity along with violent political conflicts (such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), lingering shockwaves from the pandemic, and rising food costs.

Why This Matters

Early this summer, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached 4 million years heights. Meanwhile, the year’s climate change-related extreme weather drove crop failures around the globe and will likely increase food shortages and make them more widespread. For example, the Middle East’s hotbed for agriculture has become a “less productive fertile crescent” due to increased water salinity. Also, Europe’s record-breaking heat and drought conditions are stressing crops like wheat from France (the world’s fourth-largest exporter) and olive trees from Spain, which supply nearly half the world’s olive oil. In the Western US, drought-like conditions could become permanent due to “aridification.”

Experts warn against a failure to act, citing this being just the beginning of a major hunger crisis and that famine will lead to a large-scale climate migration in the coming decades. According to disaster-relief nonprofit ShelterBox, more than 200 million people could be displaced in the next 20 years by extreme weather. By 2050, the number of climate refugees could reach 216 million, according to the World Bank.

"The full impact of climate change will make the Ukraine crisis’s impact on food prices look like kindergarten … All hell will break loose,” Enock Chikava, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Interim Director of Agriculture, told TIME.

Calling On Leadership

Humanitarian groups led by Red Cross International have banded together to warn climate change’s devastating consequences on global stability. In a report, the International Federation of the Red Cross calls on “global leaders to take action [on climate change] by ensuring that money is there to invest in disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, and community resilience."

Ready Or Not

For the first time, the US identified water scarcity as a national security threat and published the White House Action Plan on Global Water Security. Still, several places in the US, including cities in the “Sunbelt,” remain unprepared for such consequences.