India's foreign minister S Jaishankar has warned that the world faces a "major food crisis" in the coming months, as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East compound the effects of a super El Nino.
Speaking at an event organised by the Asia Society in New York, Mr Jaishankar said the two conflicts had "a devastating impact" on the economies of the Global South, and that energy, food, fertiliser and finance were all under strain at once.
"If you have energy as a big crunch and then food and fertilisers on top of it, and finance, because every time there's a conflict, money moves towards safe harbours and away from the Global South, the net result of it has been really very, very stressful," he said.
Mr Jaishankar said tight global energy markets were being worsened by countries "playing politics" with oil supplies, driving up prices at a time when they should be stabilising.
"Part of it is actually the security of oil supplies and part of it is the politics of oil supplies, and they are feeding into each other and creating an aggravated crisis," he said.
His warning comes as oil prices climbed sharply this month. Brent crude is on course for a monthly gain of around 14 per cent, its biggest since July, after US president Donald Trump denied he would ease sanctions on Iran and Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline.
The critical route for the kingdom's oil exports was knocked offline earlier this month by a drone attack Riyadh blamed on an Iran-backed militia in Iraq. The pipeline has since resumed near-full operations.
Attacks on Russian refineries and a Russian diesel export ban have separately pushed European diesel futures to a record $210 a barrel and driven up US retail diesel prices, with combined diesel exports from Russia and the Gulf falling by roughly two-thirds from last year's levels, according to Reuters.
On food, Mr Jaishankar said some of the world's major grain exporters would be unable to send out shipments, particularly from the Black Sea, where Russia's invasion of Ukraine has repeatedly disrupted exports from one of the world's largest wheat and grain-producing regions.
He said fertiliser shortages were mounting because key producers were based in the Middle East and Russia, both of which had seen their production disrupted.
"On top of it, we are looking at a super El Nino, so there is going to be a major food crisis probably in the coming months," he said.
El Nino is a naturally occurring climate pattern that warms parts of the Pacific Ocean and disrupts rainfall and food production worldwide.
This year’s El Nino, which comes on top of human-caused global warming, is expected to be stronger than others and it is already breaking records.
The Climate Impact Lab, a research group at the University of Chicago, said this month that this year's event could cause almost half a million additional heat-related deaths worldwide by February, with the heaviest toll falling on the Global South, and that global land temperatures during the event could be around 1.2C higher than usual.
"I don't think it's a question of whether it was intended or not intended. Policymakers can't say that was not intended," Mr Jaishankar said without naming any country.
"They have a responsibility to apply themselves to the situation of other countries as well and try to understand what the consequences of their decision will have on the rest of the world. Countries should not be so self-centred that you're in your own world and take your decision and say, well, it was not my intention to make your life difficult."
