climate change

The international community must plug a $2 billion funding gap for countries hit by El Nino-related drought and storms. These have left a staggering 60 million people around the world facing crop failures and worsening hunger.

As more than 160 countries come together to sign the Paris Climate Change Agreement, taking a critical step towards its implementation, Oxfam calls on governments to continue to confront climate change collectively and turn their commitments into action.

At the close of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings in Washington, Chris Stalker, Acting Head of Oxfam International’s Washington office, commented on the week's developments.

The European Commission risks betraying the Paris climate agreement by suggesting that Europe is doing enough to tackle runaway climate change, says Oxfam.

Ethiopia is facing a massive drought and food insecurity crisis. The impact of failed rains and droughts have been worsened by the 2015 El Niño. Urgent humanitarian action and long-term investment is needed so that communities can become more resilient and reduce their vulnerability to weather events in the future.

An inadequate response to El Nino will put an already overstretched humanitarian system under intense strain and expose tens of millions more people to the extreme risk of hunger, homelessness and disease. Funding is urgently required to prevent millions more women, children and men around the world from going hungry, suffering water shortages, falling ill and seeing their livelihoods collapse.

The effects of a super El Niño are set to put the world’s humanitarian system under an unprecedented level of strain in 2016 as it already struggles to cope with the fallout from conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere.The El Niño weather system could leave tens of millions of people facing hunger, water shortages and disease next year if early action isn’t taken to prepare vulnerable people from its effects. 

Millions of people in the Pacific are affected by the consequences of a powerful El Niño.