In the run up to the G8 in Germany, Oxfam has launched a paper, Adapting to climate change, calling on rich countries - primarily responsible for causing global warming - to stop harming, by rapidly cutting their greenhouse gas emissions, and to start helping, by providing the finance needed in developing countries to adapt to climate change.

The paper focuses on what it will take for developing countries to adapt to climate change. It sets out the wide range of activities needed from governments to communities, and estimates that the total cost will be at least $50bn annually, but far higher if emissions are not cut fast enough.

On the basis of the principles set out in the UN climate convention - equity, responsibility, and capacity - Oxfam has created a new Adaptation Financing Index which finds that the US, EU, Japan, Canada, and Australia should contribute over 95 per cent of the funds needed. This finance must be new and additional to existing commitments to provide 0.7 per cent of national income as ODA, since it is owed not as aid but as compensation.

Climate change experts have expressed their support of Oxfam's research. Sir Nicholas Stern, the author of Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change, said "Oxfam is right to highlight the vital importance of developed country transfers to the funding of the sound and sustainable development that can provide both rising living standards and the greater resilience that a changing climate will require".

Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a letter to the Financial Times wrote "Oxfam has explored this set of issues, clearly bringing out some of the dimensions of the challenge of adaptation to climate change for the world's poor. I believe this paper would be an extremely useful trigger for initiating a debate and discussion on these critical issues".

At the G8, world leaders affirmed their commitment to a UN process to negotiate a post-2012 deal, and pledged to make 'substantial emission reductions'. However, Oxfam warned that the climate change text fell well short of what is required to protect the poorest and most vulnerable people, who are already suffering from the impacts of climate change. We also expressed concern that they set no target for emissions cuts for any G8 country, and they made no commitment to keep global warming below 2°C.