John Magrath recently travelled to Malawi to help launch the new Oxfam report The Winds of Change: Climate Change, Poverty and the Environment in Malawi. Read his blog from Malawi, below, telling how the country and its people are coping with the effects of climate change.

Listening to someone speaking from notes bears no comparison to listening to someone speaking from deep personal experience, as I found out recently.

I was in Malawi to launch the Winds of Change: Climate Change, Poverty and the Environment in Malawi report. I was the principal author of the report, giving a talk on my findings.

But my well-crafted words were outdone when Mrs Caroline Malema, a farmer from Karonga in northern Malawi, addressed the audience of government, donors and local media.

Speaking without notes and in Chichewa (the local language), Caroline described what she saw in Karonga due to the impact of climate change.

Caroline told how she saw more and more vulnerable women selling their bodies for sex because their situation was getting more desperate day by day as agriculture faltered because of climate change.

She told how the women used to grow bananas on the Rukuru River, but increased floods have swept away the riverbank fields.

They also used to grow rice, which was a good earner, but the floods have eroded the fertile fluvial soil and left nothing but sand on the fields.

Selling sex means that HIV/AIDS is on the increase and women living with HIV, Caroline explained, need better nutrition to survive. But now that the rains are faltering, women can't grow enough cassava to protect their heath.

Women with HIV/AIDS are also susceptible to other diseases. And now, rising temperatures mean that Karonga is infected with disease-carrying mosquitoes all year round, whereas before they used to be common only in the rainy season.

Indeed, everyone there was very worried about the increase in droughts and floods in their various regions. As one of them said: "We all live downstream now."

The audience, including government representatives, listened intently to Caroline's passionate and eloquent testimony about the damage climate change is wreaking on their lives.

And her words have already had an impact. The new Malawian government has made climate change and environmental protection two of its main priorities to address over the next five years. This is a welcome commitment.

The government spokespeople at the launch also said they would fight on climate justice and to ensure a strong African voice at the negotiating table for the international talks on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

Now it's out turn and time for our governments to do our bit to ensure that a fair and safe deal is delivered for countries like Malawi at the UN climate talks in December. Considering that rich countries like the UK are responsible for three quarters of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to dangerous climate change, whereas Malawi produces less than 0.05 per cent, it's the least we can do.