Global trade is under strain due to the effects of climate change and a failure to act risks worsening food insecurity, economic instability and humanitarian crises, the UN's senior climate official has warned.
Speaking at the 2025 Nature Summit in Panama City on Tuesday, Simon Stiell used the Panama Canal as a potent example of how climate change has affected trade.
Once a symbol of global connectivity, the canal's water levels have dropped due to prolonged droughts, disrupting shipping routes and slowing the flow of critical goods. That has created a ripple effect that extends far beyond logistics, Mr Stiell said.
"It also means critical medical supplies delayed for those in desperate need, businesses collapsing and livelihoods vanishing," he added.
'Antidote to uncertainty'
With droughts linked to climate change also threatening agricultural production across continents, he noted that famine is once again on the rise, driven in part by rising global temperatures.
"The same droughts that plague the canal are affecting essential commodities worldwide, reducing harvests, emptying shelves and pushing families into hunger," he said. "Famine is back and the role of global heating cannot be ignored."
But Mr Stiell believes there is hope amid the disruption, with clean energy projects accelerating. He said investors were poised to unlock billions of dollars, if governments introduce "clear and strong" climate policies, which are an "antidote to economic uncertainty".
He added that the next generation of national climate action plans – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – must be about growth as much as emissions cuts.
"if done right, these plans can attract a bonanza of benefits," he said. "More jobs, more revenue and a virtuous cycle of increased investment."
Stronger plans needed
He referred to examples of leadership from around the world, including Brazil, host of the Cop30 climate change talks this year, as well as Germany, which has committed billions of dollars to green infrastructure. China has also established a new, economy-wide climate target.
Mr Stiell urged countries to avoid "zero-sum thinking" in the race to lead the $2 trillion clean energy market, warning against a "two-speed transition" that could leave vulnerable nations behind.
"In these uncertain times, more and more ships passing through the canal are transporting the building blocks of a global, clean energy economy," he said. "The work ahead is to make sure their numbers keep growing, and their contents reach every country on Earth."
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
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Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
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Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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