The year 2008 is halfway to the deadline for reaching the Millennium Development Goals. Despite some progress, they will not be achieved if current trends continue. Aid promises are predicted to be missed by $30bn, at a potential cost of 5 million lives. Starting with the G8 meeting in Japan, rich countries must use a series of high-profile summits in 2008 to make sure the Goals are met, and to tackle both climate change and the current food crisis. Economic woes must not be used as excuses: rich countries' credibility is on the line.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Poverty
The current biofuel policies of rich countries are neither a solution to the climate crisis nor the oil crisis, and instead are contributing to a third: the food crisis. In poor countries, biofuels may offer some genuine development opportunities, but the potential economic, social, and environmental costs are severe, and decision makers should proceed with caution.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Energy Policy, and Oil
In every society, women and men have different roles inside and outside the household, and different resources to deliver them. In the rural communities of developing countries where Oxfam works, men's roles typically focus on earning cash, by growing food, trading, or selling their labour. But it is largely the role of women to provide the food, fuel, water, and care that the family needs (all for no pay), in addition to earning some cash. In such communities, women are likely to have: greater reliance on natural resources – like rivers, wells, reliable rainfall, and forests fewer physical resources – such as land, fertilizer or irrigation, and fewer assets (like machinery, or a bicycle) to use to make money, or to sell as a last resort fewer financial resources – little cash, savings or access to credit, and less access to markets that give a good price for their goods less powerful social resources – due to social and cultural norms that limit their mobility and their voice in decision-making, reinforce traditional roles, and put them at risk of violence fewer human resources – due to having less education, fewer opportunities for training, and less access to official information.
Topic:
Climate Change, Gender Issues, and Non-Governmental Organization
People in Uganda, whose contribution to global warming has been minuscule, are feeling the impacts of climate change first and worst. On the one hand there is more erratic rainfall in the March to June rainy season, bringing drought and reductions in crop yields and plant varieties; on the other hand, the rainfall, especially in the later rains towards the end of the year, is reported as coming in downpours that are more intense and destructive, bringing floods, landslides, and soil erosion. Climate scientists say that, in the future, one of the most likely effects of climate change will be more rain, especially during the second rains from October to December.
Climate change is having a destructive impact on many groups around the world. Pastoralists in East Africa have been adapting to climate variability for millennia and their adaptability ought to enable them to cope with this growing challenge. This paper explains the policies required to enable sustainable and productive pastoralist communities to cope with the impact of climate change and generate sustainable livelihoods.
The forecast for tomorrow is a snapshot of a country deeply torn by good and bad climate policies and actions among business, public and government - with each group inextricably bound by the actions of the others. Whether the UK succeeds in achieving its emissions reduction targets and in becoming a leader in international climate negotiations depends on whether good or bad policies prevail. At stake are the lives and livelihoods of millions of poor people around the world, who will suffer first and worst from climate change despite being the least responsible for it.
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Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Globalization, and International Affairs
Cambodia is one of the most disaster-prone countries in East Asia, with its vulnerability to annual floods and droughts. One of the reasons why it is vulnerable to natural disasters is that the livelihoods of the majority of people depend directly upon natural resources, with a large proportion of its population occupied in agriculture and related sectors, including animal husbandry. Extreme poverty, which limits access to food, water, and other basic amenities, increases vulnerability. These characteristics heighten Cambodia's exposure to the impacts of climate change too. The Mekong region has recently been showing signs of climate change, as illustrated in our previous report on VietNam ('Drought-Management Considerations for Climate-Change Adaptation: Focus on the Mekong Region – Report (VietNam)', October 2007). There is evidence of greater climatic extremes: both declining rainfall in the dry season and more violent rainfall in the wet season, causing flash floods. Increasingly powerful typhoons also appear to be occurring.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Energy Policy, Environment, and Non-Governmental Organization
Vietnam is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. The government's impressive achievements in pulling millions of people out of poverty are seriously jeopardised by the likely increase in extreme weather events such as severe rainfall and drought, and by slow climate changes like sea level rises and warming temperatures. Poor men and women are particularly at risk.A team of Oxfam researchers travelled to the two provinces of Ben Tre and Quang Tri in May 2008 to take a snapshot of how poor families are experiencing the changing climate, and how they might deal with this in the future.
For the poorest and most vulnerable people in today's world, climate change is a 'triple whammy': they didn't cause it, they are most affected by it, and they are least able to afford even simple measures that could help protect them from those damaging impacts that are already unavoidable.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Globalization, and Poverty
Poor communities in the developing world are hit hardest by the impacts of climate change, while they are least responsible for the problem and most vulnerable to climate impacts, such as severe floods, drought, and storms. At the climate change negotiations in Bali in December 2007, governments recognized that adaptation should be central to the negotiations. In the Bali Action Plan, adaptation is one of the four building blocks besides mitigation, finance, and technology transfer, and the Plan provides a mandate to negotiate on 'new and additional resources' and the use of 'innovative finance mechanisms' to address urgent and compelling climate adaptation needs.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Globalization, and Poverty