climate emergency

Responding to the draft COP26 decision text, Tracy Carty, head of Oxfam’s COP26 delegation said: "This draft COP decision text is too weak. It fails to respond to the climate emergency being faced by millions of people now, who are living with unprecedented extreme weather and being pushed further into poverty."

The United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is an indefensible, pointless and morally bankrupt capitulation that will only serve to weaken the global effort to combat the climate crisis, Oxfam said.

As world leaders gather in New York this week for the Climate Action Summit, Oxfam partner Jose Mucote decided to come all the way from Mozambique to share his experiences as a first responder to the devastating Cyclone Idai earlier this year, a cyclone that is a true witness of a climate crisis we can no longer ignore.

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.

Europe needs ambitious targets and concrete policies to cut emissions and tacke the climate crisis, said Oxfam at the occasion of EU heads of state and governments meeting for a European Union summit in Brussels today.

Hundreds of European cities, regions, businesses, youth and faith groups and civil society organisations are urging European leaders to take decisive action to respond to the climate emergency by profoundly altering the way we run our societies and economies to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C.