climate change

Oxfam praised President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping for officially joining their countries to the Paris climate agreement today.

This year’s G20 Summit will raise the stakes for the group to prove itself against growing doubts about its effectiveness – not least for people living in poverty, says Oxfam.

The failure to recognize community land rights not only undermines the human rights of local people. It also threatens humanity’s ability to achieve food security and fight climate change.

The lingering effects of El Niño have affected around 7 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean. Oxfam and its local partners have been helping some of the most vulnerable people in the region to become more resilient to extreme weather patterns.

The European Commission unveiled measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions focused on transport, buildings, land and agriculture, which Oxfam says puts the EU at odds with its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement.

The devastating impacts of the 2015–16 El Niño will be felt well into 2017. There is an urgent need for humanitarian action where the situation is already dire, to prepare for La Niña later this year, to commit to new measures to build communities’ resilience, and to mobilize global action to address climate change

Despite progress, much work remains to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to support the millions of people already hit by climate change. This paper presents new data commissioned from the research consultancy CE Delft on the greenhouse gas emissions footprints and water scarcity footprints of major food commodities. 

Rice, soy beans, corn, wheat and palm oil together lead to more greenhouse gas emissions than any country’s individual footprint, apart from China and the United States, according to new Oxfam research into the food industry and climate change.

As climate talks in Germany wrap up, both poor and rich nations increasingly recognize that fixing the climate change adaptation funding gap, one of the biggest holes in the Paris Agreement, will be a major challenge at the next United Nations conference in Morocco.
 

El Niño is a crisis of global proportions, seriously affecting 60 million people around the world, yet it is not getting international attention and there remains a huge funding gap of nearly $1.8bn. The appointment of Mary Robinson and Macharia Kamau as Special Envoys for El Niño by the UN is an encouraging step.