"Climate change is already having a considerable impact on security," Sarkozy said in a speech to ministers from 16 economies that together account for 80 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions.

Water scarcity and rivalry for farmland and fishing resources were emerging as "major challenges," especially in Africa, he said.

"In Darfur, we see this explosive mixture from the impact of climate change, which prompts emigration by increasingly impoverished people, which then has consequences in war," said Sarkozy.

"If we keep going down this path, climate change will encourage the immigration of people with nothing towards areas where the population do have something, and the Darfur crisis will be only one crisis among dozens of others."

Nearly five years old, the war in western Sudan has claimed more than 200,000 lives from fighting, famine and disease and 2.2 million others have been left homeless. The exodus has had a spillover effect on neighbouring countries.

Sarkozy announced France would double its emergency food aid this year to 60 million euros (100 million dollars) and said the world "cannot remain indifferent to the unrest" in countries where people were hungry.

Soaring prices for basic grains -- rice, wheat, soybean and corn -- have provoked protests and rioting in at least half a dozen developing countries in past months.

Experts say the food crisis has multiple causes. These include the surging demand for meat in fast-growing China and India, which encourages land to be turned over for grazing and grain to be grown for animal fodder rather than food.

Global warming may be amplifying water scarcity, especially in Australia, which is one of the world's breadbaskets, according to some opinion. The US rush to biofuels to help reduce carbon emissions has also been fingered.

The Paris talks gathered ministers from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States.

Launched by Bush last September, the so-called Major Economies Meetings (MEMs) aim at fast-tracking negotiations towards a new UN pact on climate change by the end of 2009.

The process also looks at how to enlist smart technology and energy-intensive industries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

MEM leaders are to meet at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Toyako, Japan in July 7-9, where they are to issue a raft of recommendations.

One idea being aired is for a 50-percent global emissions cut by 2050.

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told reporters "substantive progress" was made in Paris.

But divergence remained over a long-term target and a further meeting might be called before Toyako to address this, he said.

"Some countries (are) preferring a numerical goal, some countries are favouring a numerical goal provided it's aspirational rather than more binding, and others (are) more in favour of setting a sense of direction than trying to pin things down on particular numbers," he said.

The two-day Paris meeting was soured on Thursday by criticism of President George W. Bush's new climate plan.

Bush on Wednesday said he wanted US emissions to peak by 2025, a measure attacked as too late and too timid by Europeans, while his demand that developing countries make concessions was fiercely attacked by South Africa.

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