Climate change and poverty

"So you didn't just sit in the office and write this report?"

2008-08-15T15:53:37Z

No, John Magrath didn't just sit in the office to write Oxfam's report on climate change in Uganda, as readers of his diary will know! Here John speaks, in his inimitable style, to Pushpanath Krishnamurthy, about the report, and it's launch, with a recycled banana information pack, in Kampala.

Video: Voices from South Asia - Part 1

2008-08-01T12:50:49Z

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Pushpanath Krishnamurthy

I recently spent forty days travelling around South and East Asia. At a learning event in Bangladesh, a country literally in the 'eye of the storm' of climate change, I met many people, from South Asian countries, and from Europe, and from grassroots workers, to policy makers. One thing was clear - the impact of climate change is not something in the future. The stories I heard captured both anguish and shattered lives, and the great resilience and courage of many organisations and communities. Every flood or cyclone sets back families so much. Women, children, and the more vulnerable people in communities are suffering most. Adaptation is costly, and we urgently need to support people to adapt. But no matter how much we adapt, it is not going to help if we do not attack the fundamental cause - carbon emissions. Here is the first of three voices from India (the others will be posted over the next couple of weeks). Usha is the coordinator of Thanal, an Oxfam partner organisation in Trivandrum, in the Indian state of Kerala. Thanal is a public interest research, advocacy, education and action trust. You can watch an interview with its director on YouTube.

Turning Up the Heat: new report on Uganda

2008-07-17T00:01:00Z

Following our climate researcher John Magrath's blog on his Uganda trip earlier this year, his full report, Turning up the Heat, is now released. It contains a wealth of case studies, interviews, and beautiful images, as well as hard facts and recommendations for how Uganda can implement adaptation.

Drunk Driving at the G8

2008-07-10T12:29:05Z

Kate Raworth, Oxfam senior researcher climate change "After today's G8 summit we agreed to set the aim for a reduction of the entire global emissions of gases to 50 per cent by 2050, as a target to be taken up by the entire world". This was Japan's Prime Minister Fukuda speaking on behalf of the G8 leaders last Tuesday. What an extraordinary situation: eight people from eight countries setting policy with such huge implications for the whole world. But hey, they said they would halve global emissions - that's got to have been a good thing, right? Wrong. First, it's not even a policy. Without stating a base year to make cuts against, it is meaningless. Without setting a mid-term target for 2020, it is un-ambitious. And without a commitment that rich countries will take on the biggest share of cuts, it is unjust. South Africa's environment minister rightly dismissed it as 'an empty slogan without substance'. The world's climate scientists are clear: we need global greenhouse gas emission cuts of at least 80% against 1990 levels by 2050 in order to stay safely below 2 degrees warming. By "safely" they mean we would still have up to a one-in-three chance of overshooting into dangerous climate change. But this is the safest target anywhere close to being on the table for discussion. In 1990, global greenhouse gas levels were 36 Gigatonnes of CO2e. They're 47 Gt today and rising. By 2050, therefore, they must be just 7 Gt for "safety". Yes, it is hugely ambitious. But the alternative is to choose an irreversible increase in floods, droughts, hurricanes and sea-level rise, which would cause chronic food shortages, water scarcity, homelessness, and health crises for well over one billion of the world's poorest people for generations to come. So what is the G8 actually proposing? If they mean that we should halve global emissions by 2050, measured against 1990 levels - the most generous reading we could give to their words - then we would end up with 18 Gt of greenhouse gases in 2050. That's more than double the safe limit. Or, if what they actually mean - and it's only too possible - is that we halve emissions by 2050, but only starting from now, then that will put us more than three times over the safe limit, at 23 Gt. This is equivalent to a serious, jailable offence of intentionally drunk driving - and with the rest of the world forced to ride in the back seat. In any other situation, the police would take away their car keys. Data source: CAIT and EcoEquity

Biofuels - why we should be cautious

2008-07-10T10:11:45Z

Oxfam has a letter in today's Guardian outlining its position on biofuels, focusing on their contribution to the global food crisis. The letter is in reply to yesterday's response by the European Commision's energy spokesman to a World Bank report obtained by The Guardian, which stated that biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%. [see also the coverage and discussion on the Gristmill blog] The European Commision attributes only a very small impact by biofuels on food prices. As well as giving support to the evidence contained in the World Bank's report, Oxfam's points to the new evidence of higher emissions from biofuels than previously though, contained in the UK government's Gallagher review.

Climate change and food prices

2008-06-30T14:08:00Z

John Magrath

How much is climate change responsible for the recent escalation in food prices? That's a hard question to answer, but there are at least 3 ways in which it is influencing events. One is that the wrong policies on biofuels have increased prices, as Oxfam's Robert Bailey has recently pointed out. The rush to grow biofuels came about initially more as a way to support agriculture and farmer's incomes (i.e. subsidise, basically) than as a response to climate change; then the oil price crisis accelerated it. Oxfam's report shows that most biofuels are useless (or worse) at reducing carbon emissions and may well be responsible for something in the order of 30% in the increase in food prices. One SUV tank of corn-based ethanol could feed a poor person for a year. The biofuel madness is a stark warning that "obvious" or supposedly painless responses to climate change that seem to allow us to continue consuming as before may be anything but. And it's a warning of the danger of letting climate change policies be captured by particular interest groups.

Second, climate change isn't necessarily about big, extreme "weather events" (yet, anyway). It's currently more insidious than that. When I was in Uganda in March - as I've written in previous blogs - farmers kept saying that it's just getting harder to grow things. Especially food crops. Cash crops like cocoa do OK, but if there's no food to buy in the market with the cash you get, you can't eat money. In their experience climate change means the every day weather just isn't right, and it's certainly not benign. It rains harder and in bursts; in between storms the sun beats down more fiercely; and the seasons seem all mixed up. So people in countries like Uganda are growing less just at the time when the prices of what they import to fill the gap are going up. But third, there are "big" events happening. Take Australia. Australia exports two-thirds of its agricultural produce and it's the world's second largest exporter of wheat and canola, and the largest barley exporter. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2006-07 wheat production fell by 57%, barley by 55% and rice by 84%. This is what the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology said in May: "The combination of record heat and widespread drought during the past 5-10 years over large parts of Southern and Eastern Australia is without historical precedent and is, at least partly, a result of climate change". The present drought looks to be the latest culmination of a change in the island continent's climate that set in with startling abruptness only in the late 1960's, within living memory, as much of the Southern Hemisphere warmed up. Fortunately, politics can shift even more quickly; one election saw Australian political attitudes towards climate change alter dramatically. New Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's first act in power was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the ratification coming into force last March. Will we see a similar breakthrough in the USA come election time?

Sisters on the Planet

2008-06-13T16:31:44Z

Oxfam's Sisters on the Planet campaign was launched this week with a screening in London of four short films focusing on the effect of climate change on women around the world, including Martina Longom. The films illustrate that climate change is having a disproportionate impact on people in developing countries, and that women are the worst affected. It tends to be women who grow the family's food, fetch fuel and water, and bring up the children. So when clean water becomes harder to find during a drought, or when crops are destroyed by floods, it's up to women to find solutions. Following the film screening, New Scientist reporter Catherine Brahic, writing in their environment blog, was unconvinced that climate change is a gender issue, but praised the films as interesting and moving.

Video: droughts, floods, and rising temperatures are lethal for rice paddies in Cambodia

2008-06-13T15:09:04Z

Climate change in Uganda diary - part 5

2008-06-02T13:33:16Z

John Magrath

Uganda's climate is changing. In particular, its once reliable main rainy season from March to June is becoming less so. Paul Isabirye, Principal Meteorological Officer in the Department of Meteorology in the Prime Minister's Office, told me: "Production from the agriculture sector is becoming less and less as we experience more extreme events which are becoming more frequent and more intense, notably droughts. The rain oscillation is becoming bigger, rainfall distribution is poor so planning on seasonal rains is becoming harder and harder". Poverty is linked to climate and can be induced by climate change. Put simply, lower yields mean less food and greater hunger. More illness is also linked to seasonal climatic variations, with malaria cases, for example, shooting upwards in the rainy season. Ugandans cite illness, with the consequent inability to work and the costs of seeking medical treatment, as the main immediate reason for falling into poverty.

Paul Isabirye

But climate alone, not even the more extreme climate that will be caused by global warming, is rarely the reason people fall into poverty. It can be the trigger, but not the main cause; the proverbial "last straw that broke the camel's back". For example, farmers I spoke to tell how climate change has reduced their yields, but they might be able to buy more food if they got fairer prices - if they had better access to markets and did not have to sell their cocoa or vanilla to middle men at low prices. Persistent poverty, ill health and desperation make people vulnerable. Reducing vulnerability by tackling poverty, ill health and desperation is essential to be able to cope with bigger climate changes induced by man-made global warming as they really begin to bite in the near future. In Oxfam's experience and analysis poverty is not natural; it is neither part of an ordained scheme of things nor is it primarily due to natural causes. Poverty is made by human beings, and can be removed by them. Protecting and restoring the environment are also crucial to reduce climate change impacts. Landslides would not be so frequent or severe if it were not for serious deforestation. The floods that hit north and east Uganda late last year would not have been so bad if wetlands had not been drained to grow crops, reducing the ability of the land to absorb water. Climate change, too, is not natural, but is made by human beings, in the shape of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning, as a result of industrialisation in Europe and North America over the last 150 years. Yet the impacts are being felt first and most by people in developing countries like Uganda, whose contribution to global warming has been miniscule. Climate change does not happen in isolation. It interacts with existing problems and challenges - notably deforestation, soil degradation, declining food security, declining fish stocks - and makes them worse. Adaptation has to start with adaptation to the current climate. The people of Uganda are highly susceptible to present climatic variations and shocks. Building resilience to how the climate is currently changing is vital both in its own right and as a way to build resilience to whatever climatic changes the future has in store. The right strategies to adapt to climate change will also be the right strategies for truly sustainable development, and to reduce poverty. A new Oxfam report on the impacts of climate change upon poor people in Uganda will be published in late June. Uganda diary - part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5

Climate impacts in Uganda diary - part 4

2008-05-22T17:46:16Z

John Magrath

Unusually heavy and prolonged rains from July to November last year led to extraordinary floods across huge regions of north and eastern Uganda. Latrines were flooded and the germ-laden water contaminated the wells and other water sources, causing massive increases in dysentery - and more water contamination. Cases of malaria also shot up. Oxfam launched a big operation to provide emergency clean water and to replace latrines. The floods also wiped out food crops and food stocks, and the danger of starvation has continued up to the present day. Ajojo Janet describes the experience of herself and her family, which was typical of many. She says: "We grew cow peas, sweet potatoes, millet, cassava, green gram, sorghum, ground nuts, sim-sim [sesame]. Our plots were flooded; we lost all of our crops. Even our compound was flooded and we couldn't dry what little we managed to rescue. We just felt helpless, our houses collapsed, we were soaked, we took refuge in a primary school".

Ajojo Janet

Janet and her household, a total of 10 people, received 50 kilograms of maize from the Prime Minister's Office that was dropped by helicopter. But for some six months, the food that they have depended upon has been termites. She says: "We take spear grass and put it in the ant's nest and pull it out. If you get two cupfuls, lucky you! Not everyone can stomach them - we sell some termites to buy beans for them". When I spoke to her, she and her family were labouring in brickworks, the men loading bricks, the women fetching water, to earn money to buy enough seeds to sow in the hope of a good rainy season. Asked what she expects if the floods come again she replies: "Just death". Elotu Joseph Elyanu, the District Agricultural Officer, observes that eating termites and wild leaves is a common strategy to ward off hunger in normal years during the "hunger gap" between April and May. But this year, he says, people started eating termites from February, even from January - indeed, they have barely stopped since the floods. He says: "Now, the situation is not good. Most people lost their crops and couldn't dry them so most people now have only one meal a day and we've noticed communities have started eating wild leaves and termites". He is watching with bated breath to see whether this year's rains bring life - or more death. A new Oxfam report on the impacts of climate change upon poor people in Uganda will be published in late June. Uganda diary - part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5

Climate impacts in Uganda diary - part 3

2008-05-16T15:54:03Z

John Magrath

Agriculturalists in Uganda are not the only group of people reporting serious changes to their climate. The same changes have been observed by pastoralists and semi-pastoralists - people who keep herds of cattle and other livestock and who are more or less mobile. Pastoralists mostly live in the more arid areas, and are highly skilled at living with a harsh and highly variable climate - provided they have the space to move. That space, however, is increasingly being denied them as governments try to settle them and farmers fence off migration routes.

Martina Longom

In the community of Jie near Kotido, Martina Longom is looking after her three children and her animals. In March the land is parched; her husband and the other men have taken most of the cattle away with them far to the West where they know the places where there is likely to still be good pasture. She talked to Oxfam researchers looking at the impact of climate change on women's lives as part of the Oxfam project "Sisters on the Planet". She said: "In the past there was enough rain. Whenever it rained the fields would yield all kinds of fruit and our mothers would store lots of food in our granaries. We used to have plenty of boiled sorghum and porridge to eat and plenty of milk to drink. But now things are different. Cows are dying. The rains have disappeared. And when it rains these days, it just drizzles. The drizzle does not enable the sorghum to grow properly. The climate is unpredictable now. And when it does rain, it can be destructive; it sometimes causes bad floods, which then destroy our crops, just like last year. "The drinking water that we used to fetch from the riverbeds can no longer be found. The riverbeds have dried up as well. Only hard rock is found beneath them. There is a lot of thirst; even the few livestock we own have so little water. I lament, 'what can I do to address this thirst?'. Even if you have food to cook, you still need water to do the cooking. What can I do?". She is speaking of the Karimojong strategy to dig into the sand of the riverbed to find water that has seeped down, but even this has dried up. There are varieties of trees that withstand drought, like the Valentine tree or the Aperu, and in extreme circumstances people pick their leaves to make a sauce or mix with sorghum flour. She adds that every time she goes to cut wood she has to walk further, as all the trees near her village have been cut down. That exposes her to danger from attack and sexual assault. She sells firewood in the nearest town and with the money she gets, she buys salt and small fish. Her biggest worry is the medical expense if one of her children needs to go to hospital. Oxfam is helping Karimojong women like Martina through establishing grain stores so they can eke out the cereals they grow while their men folk are away. A new Oxfam report on the impacts of climate change upon poor people in Uganda will be published in late June. Uganda diary - part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5

Climate impacts in Uganda diary - part 2

2008-05-09T17:09:29Z

John Magrath

In researching climate change impacts on farmers and herders in Uganda recently, what struck me with great force was that everyone I spoke to, without a single exception, described the same large-scale changes in their climate over the last 20 or so years. Most of Uganda has a bimodal climate, that is, there are two rainy seasons. One starts in March and lasts through until June. The second lasts from around October until about December. In the north the country is more arid; most rain comes in April then peters out until finishing in September.

Baluku Yofesi

There have been big changes to both seasons. Farmer Baluku Yofesi in Kasese District in western Uganda describes the first: "We used to have much more rainfall than we are having now, that's one big change, and to me this area is hotter than 20 years ago. Until about 1988 the climate was okay, we had two rainy seasons and they were very reliable. Now the March to June season in particular isn't reliable, which doesn't favour the crops we grow. Rain might stop in April. "Because of the shortened rains you have to go for early maturing varieties and now people are trying to select these. That's why some local varieties of pumpkins and cassava that need a lot of rain, even varieties of beans, have disappeared. We need things that mature in two months - maize needs three months of rain to grow so two months is not enough". Asked what the effects are, he says: "Reduced production means reduced income, obviously. And because of the reduction in traditional varieties we have poorer nutrition because we don't have the variety of foods, and because of malnutrition there's an increased susceptibility to disease. Children can't concentrate at school". In contrast to increasing heat and drought during the first rains, the second rains seem to have got stronger, which is very much in line with computer models that forecast climate change. But the extra rain isn't useful - to the contrary, it rains so hard that it sweeps away both crops and the soil they grow in, and causes floods. In the mountainous areas like Rwenzori in the west or Elgon in the east, the torrential rain brings landslides that can cause heavy loss of life. A new Oxfam report on the impacts of climate change upon poor people in Uganda will be published in late June. Uganda diary - part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5

Video: irregular seasons in Papua New Guinea

2008-05-08T15:14:36Z

Climate impacts in Uganda diary - part 1

2008-04-30T15:32:31Z

John Magrath

I have just come back from Uganda where I've been talking to farmers and animal herders about the impacts of climate changes on their lives. Does it have the same impact on everyone? It quickly becomes apparent that the answer is "no". I find this out early on in a village in Bundibugyo district in western Uganda, in the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains. I'm talking to an elderly gentleman called Mbejuna Lazaro who enumerates the crops he grows - cocoa and coffee, vanilla, matoke, soya beans, sweet potatoes, cassava, maize and groundnuts - and he says he's branching out into bee keeping. However, when asked what climate changes he has observed since he began farming in 1965, he looks puzzled and then says "I must refer your question to my wives". In Uganda, as in most of Africa, women are of course the main farmers. The men may break up the land to sow the seeds, but the women usually plant and do all the work of tending the crops from day to day throughout the growing season.

Mbejuna Lazaro and Florence Madamu

His elder wife Florence Madamu emerges from the kitchen and immediately puts a different perspective on matters "The cassava", she says, "no longer yields anything, there are flies that eat up the leaves. Bananas are attacked by mosaic. This area no longer produces beans; we've tried and failed. Sometimes we grow soya beans but they don't do well. The only crop that currently does well is sweet potato; for the cassava there's no hope". The reason, she says, is climate change. "Because of the current weather changes the yields have completely gone down. All this is a result of long spells of sunshine - the sun is prolonged until the end of September - and whenever it rains it rains so heavily it destroys all our crops in the fields. You can plant a whole acre or two and come out with nothing". How does she adapt her farming methods? She throws her hands up. "We've stopped even adopting seasonal planting, because it's so useless" she says. "Now we just try all the time. We used to plant in March and that'd be it. Now we plant and plant again. We waste a lot of seeds that way, and our time and energy. We regret it so often, why we planted. Then we have to plan to acquire other seeds, and the seeds here are very costly. "Sometimes you feel like crying. Sometimes you've hired labour and you end up losing all that money for preparing your land". John Magrath, climate change researcher A new Oxfam report on the impacts of climate change upon poor people in Uganda will be published in late June. Uganda diary - part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5

UK government to review its support of biofuels

2008-04-23T14:08:12Z

Some news just released: following a meeting of leading experts including scientists and food producers at Number 10 Downing Street on Monday, the UK government is to review its biofuels policy. This follows widespread concern over biofuels' negative effect on food prices. Oxfam recently produced a briefing highlighting the devastating consequences that projected food price hikes will have on poor people.