Climate-Driven Hunger

In the first half of 2025, nearly 20,000 people crossed the English Channel to the United Kingdom in small boats — a 48 per cent increase from the same period last year. In Greece,arrivals from Libya have surged by 173% since the beginning of 2024.

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Seeking to curb migration, Western leaders are bolstering border enforcement and striking deals with transit countries. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called for stronger border controls across the continent, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to “smash the gangs” facilitating illegal crossings.

While the number of international migrants has nearly doubled since 1990, today’s migration pressures are justa glimpse of what lies ahead, as climate change threatensto accelerate displacement sharply. Leaders alarmed by current trends must recognize that these are merely early tremors. Reactive, short-term restrictions will be wholly inadequate to stem the rising tide of people displaced by climate-driven conflicts and disasters.

Instead, governments mustconfront the root causes of migration. Chief among them isfood insecurity, which is rising globally as climate change severely disrupts agricultural production. Nowhere is this more acute than in Africa, which has just experienced its warmest decade on record. In 2023, Kenya suffered its worst drought in 40 years. The following year, Southern Africa faced its most severe drought in at least a century, reducing maize harvests in Zambia and Zimbabwe by more than half. Meanwhile, devastating floods in South Sudan wiped out more than 30 million farm animals in 2024.