Global efforts to reduce hunger and halt deforestation are falling short of international targets, with new reports documenting worsening food insecurity in dozens of countries and continued destruction of millions of hectares of forest each year. The World Hunger Index estimates that about 645 million people worldwide are currently experiencing hunger, while a separate forest assessment records approximately seven million hectares of forest cleared in 2025. Although forest loss declined from the previous year, the pace of destruction remains incompatible with the goal of ending deforestation by 2030.
The World Hunger Index, published by Welthungerhilfe and two partner organisations, rose from 17.6 points in 2018 to 18.1 in 2026. The increase marks the first deterioration in the global hunger situation in the index’s data series, which extends back to 2000. Hunger has increased in 32 countries with moderate, serious or very serious hunger levels, while another 20 have made little progress. If current trends continue, 57 countries are projected to miss the 2030 target of achieving low levels of hunger. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest regional index score.
Conflict, displacement and extreme weather are among the principal factors worsening food insecurity, while reductions in humanitarian funding are limiting the response. Russia’s war against Ukraine disrupted global food and fertiliser markets, contributing to higher food prices, according to the report. The conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran, together with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, has added to the pressures described in the assessment. Rising prices have made a healthy diet unaffordable for an estimated 2.69 billion people.
The war in Sudan, which began in 2023, has produced one of the world’s most severe hunger crises. In 2025, approximately 24.6 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity, almost half the country’s population. An estimated 33.7 million people require humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations. For 2026, projections indicate that about 825,000 children under five will suffer from severe acute malnutrition. The scale of need places Sudan among the most serious examples of the relationship between armed conflict and worsening food insecurity documented in the report.
Nigeria has experienced the largest deterioration in hunger since 2018 among the countries assessed. Its World Hunger Index score rose from 28.2 to 34.3 points. The Democratic Republic of the Congo recorded a score of 39.5, placing it among the countries most severely affected. According to Action Against Hunger, 27.7 million people in the country faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2025, including more than 10 million in the conflict-affected eastern provinces. Fighting, displacement and looting have disrupted farming and trade, while a severe Ebola outbreak has added to the country’s difficulties. Funding cuts also forced more than 1,000 nutrition centres to close in 2025, depriving over 390,000 severely acutely malnourished children of access to treatment, the organisation said.
Somalia recorded the highest hunger index score of any country assessed, despite longer-term improvements. More than half its population suffers from chronic undernutrition. In South Sudan, more than half the population also experienced high levels of acute food insecurity at certain points in 2026. Beyond Africa, acute food insecurity increased particularly sharply between 2024 and 2025 in Myanmar, where the number affected rose by 2.3 million, Afghanistan, where it increased by 1.6 million, and Yemen, where it grew by 1.4 million.
Conflict was the principal driver of acute food crises in 19 countries and territories during 2025, affecting 147.4 million people, according to the World Hunger Index. Violence forces people away from farmland and interrupts trade routes, while droughts, floods and high prices intensify shortages. At the same time, funding for humanitarian food assistance in crisis regions fell by 59 per cent between 2022 and 2025, according to Action Against Hunger. The reductions are also threatening data collection, making it more difficult to establish the full extent of food emergencies.
The forest assessment identifies a parallel failure to make progress quickly enough towards an international target. Approximately seven million hectares of forest were cleared worldwide in 2025, a reduction of about 15 per cent from the nearly 8.1 million hectares recorded in 2024. The report was published by research organisations and advocacy groups. The decline is welcome, but the authors say it remains insufficient to achieve the commitment made at the Glasgow climate conference in 2021 to halt the destruction of forests and other landscapes by 2030.
Between 2018 and 2020, annual deforestation averaged 8.3 million hectares, the benchmark used by the report’s authors to measure subsequent progress. From 2021 to 2024, forest loss barely moved away from the earlier level. To reach zero deforestation by 2030, annual losses would have needed to fall by one million hectares each year from that point. The reductions achieved so far have not followed that trajectory. “It is good news that we lost 15 per cent less forest in 2025 than in 2024, but that looks partly so positive only because the preceding years were so bad,” said Erin Matson, the report’s lead author.
Regional figures reveal contrasting trends. Deforestation in tropical Africa’s Congo Basin reached 2.4 million hectares, bringing it close to the 2.5 million hectares recorded in the Latin American tropics. For the first time since records began, forest loss in the Congo Basin had risen to a level comparable with that of the Latin American region. Measures introduced under Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva were associated with a 33 per cent reduction in deforestation in the region, while the authors found no comparable signs of a decline in the Congo Basin, where forest destruction is driven mainly by agricultural expansion, timber extraction and mining.
The report’s authors caution that the gains in forest protection may not continue, noting that the fate of forests important to the global climate depends heavily on decisions made by a small number of governments. Co-author Ivan Palmegiani said: “Ultimately, the crisis we observe in our forests is actually the result of a broader crisis in the economic and governance systems that enable and even encourage their destruction.”
