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The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020 —at a rate of $14 million per hour— while nearly five billion people have been made poorer, reveals a new Oxfam report on inequality and global corporate power. If current trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years.

“Climate change has set our planet on fire, millions are already feeling the impacts, and the IPCC just showed that things can get much worse," said Raijeli Nicole, regional director for Oxfam in the Pacific.

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."

New figures released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) show that the number of hungry people has risen for the third year in a row, mainly as a result of conflict and the climate crisis. However, despite the spiralling hunger and two global food price crises in a little over ten years, hunger has fallen off the political agenda.

Responding to the WTO’s published ‘outcome’ of negotiations over a waiver of Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS), Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy for Oxfam and co-chair of the People's Vaccine Alliance, said: "This text is a recognition that WTO rules on intellectual property are a clear barrier to ensuring people get the vaccines, tests, and treatments they need. It is a tragedy that it has taken almost two years and millions of deaths to reach this point and a travesty that the action proposed today falls well short of what is needed."

On the newly published UN Synthesis Report on the post-2015 framework, which sets the global development agenda for the next 15 years: Oxfam is disappointed that the UN has not made far stronger proposals to address extreme economic inequality and climate change in its new report.

Reacting to the outcome of the Busan aid negotiations, Oxfam said donors had put off important decisions about how to improve aid.

New Oxfam research shows that over a third of the world’s population has had no public money to cope with the effects of the pandemic. A new report “Shelter from the Storm” reviewed government programs used to inject additional money to help people and found none of them were adequate to meet everyone’s needs.

As poor countries face the full impact of the economic crisis, European governments are falling short by nearly €40bn (USD$55m) on their aid promises and will not meet their 2010 aid target until 2012, a new report from CONCORD reveals.

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.