No nation, "whether it's large or small, rich or poor, will be immune from the impacts of climate change," former U.S. President Barack Obama said in a speech on Tuesday.
Obama, who was speaking at the Seeds & Chips Global Food Innovation Summit in Milan, Italy, went on to add that the planet's changing climate was already "making it more difficult to produce food" and said that shrinking yields and spiking food prices were in some cases leading to political instability.
Obama's remarks come as speculation mounts that President Donald Trump could pull the U.S. out of the historic Paris Agreement, reached at the end of 2015.
Under that agreement, world leaders agreed to make sure global warming stayed "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Commenting on both his time in office and the Paris Agreement, Obama looked to send a strong message.
"Over my eight years in office we dramatically increased our generation of clean energy, we acted dramatically to curtail our use of dirty energy, and we invested in energy efficiency across the board," he said.
"In Paris… we helped to lead the world to the first significant global agreement for a low-carbon future," he added.
"But here's the thing: even if every country somehow puts the brakes on the emissions that exist today, climate change would still have an impact on our world for years to come."
Obama went on to state that he did not believe the planet was condemned "to ever rising temperatures" and added that these problems had been caused by man, and could be solved by man.
