Press releases

Bolivia will be battered on five fronts by climate change, according to a new report published by Oxfam International today. The report underlines what is at stake at UN climate talks in Barcelona and an EU-US Summit in Washington today.

Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson, Honorary President of Oxfam International and former UN commissioner for human rights, will hear testimony from people living on the climate front line at a special tribunal in Cape Town.

The worst flooding the Philippines has seen in decades highlights the urgent need for US leadership to push UN climate change negotiations in Bangkok forward to help ensure the best chance of securing a global climate treaty in Copenhagen.

Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson delivered a global verdict on the human cost of climate change today. The judgment was passed at the world’s first international climate hearing during Humanitarian Day at the Copenhagen UN Climate Summit.

The cost of weather-related disasters in the five years since global leaders last met to discuss climate change is almost half a trillion dollars ($490 billion) – three times more than for the whole of the 1970s.

In response to the outcome of the June UN Climate Meetings (SB60) in Bonn, Germany, Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International’s Climate Change Policy Lead, said: "This year’s climate talks felt like treading water in a rising tide, with the world’s biggest economies failing to act with the urgency this crisis demands. Rich countries continue to shirk their responsibilities in contributing their fair share to the global effort to reduce carbon pollution."

The official outcome of two years of climate negotiations was released at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen today.

Welcoming the publication of the World Bank report, Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impa

On the shape of the new 2015 climate agreement being negotiated this week, Tracy Carty, Oxfam Climate Change Policy Adviser, said:

The small island states – the country’s most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – outlined their proposal for a climate deal in Copenhagen today.