climate change

In response to the decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the Grand Chamber’s first-ever climate-related cases (Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others, and Carême v. France), Evelien van Roemburg, Head of Oxfam’s European Union office said: “European judges have ruled that a government’s failure to do enough to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions violates its population’s human rights. This is a positive step and allows people to require their governments to put in place effective climate regulations and carbon budgets. But the judges did not challenge Switzerland’s decision to give itself almost three more decades to reach net zero emissions, even though people around the world are being harmed now by the climate crisis.”   
 

Only 28 percent of the world’s most influential food and agriculture corporations report they are reducing their water withdrawals and just 23 percent say they are taking action to reduce water pollution. Oxfam’s new analysis of 350 corporations using World Benchmarking Alliance data comes ahead of World Water Day (March 22). 

Oxfam warns that over six million people from farming families in Zambia are facing acute food shortages and malnutrition until next growing season, which is twelve months away, due to a severe drought, exacerbated by climate change and El Nino, which has caused massive crop failures for half of the nation’s “planted area”. 

Global climate finance levels are woefully insufficient to keep warming below 1.5°C or protect people from the devastating impacts of climate breakdown —and this gap is particularly evident in countries mired in conflict or that are unable to provide basic services for their communities. 

In response to the launch by France and Kenya of an international taxation taskforce at COP28 to push for new levies to raise further money for climate action, Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International’s Climate Change Policy Lead, said: “While the will to move the international tax agenda towards raising critical new funds for countries most affected by the climate crisis is welcome, the proposals being put on the table fall far short of what is needed. Taxing excess profits and the obscene wealth in the hands of the top 1% should be at the core of this initiative. That’s where the money is —and this is what is needed to help stop the runaway inequality that is fueling climate breakdown."

The richest 1 percent of the world’s population produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 than the five billion people who made up the poorest two-thirds of humanity, reveals a new Oxfam report today. It comes ahead of the UN climate summit in Dubai, amid growing fears that the 1.5°C target for curtailing rising temperatures appears increasingly unachievable.

In response to the United Nations Environment Program’s Adaptation Gap Report 2023, Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International’s Climate Change Policy Lead, said: “The report underlines how the gap in adaptation funding —at its ‘highest ever’ amid accelerating climate breakdown— must be addressed with the utmost urgency next month in Dubai."

722 of the world’s biggest corporations together raked in over $1 trillion in windfall profits each year for the past two years amid soaring prices and interest rates, while billions of people are having to cut back or go hungry. 

Max Lawson, Oxfam International's Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said: "The G7 had failed the Global South here in Hiroshima.  They failed to cancel debts, and they failed to find what is really required to end the huge increase in hunger worldwide. They can find untold billions to fight the war but can’t even provide half of what is needed by the UN for the most critical humanitarian crises."

Wealthy Group of Seven (G7) countries owe low- and middle-income countries $13.3 trillion in unpaid aid and funding for climate action, reveals new analysis from Oxfam ahead of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan.