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Oxfam and climate change – FAQ
Poor people are suffering the effects of climate change, here and now. Find out why tackling global warming and climate change is central to Oxfam’s work to fight poverty, and the positive part you can play.
- What is climate change?
- Is climate change really happening?
- Why is Oxfam working on climate change?
- When did Oxfam start working on climate change?
- Is climate change already having an impact on Oxfam's work?
- What is Oxfam doing about climate change?
- What does 'climate change adaptation' mean?
- What does 'climate change mitigation' mean?
- Why do we need to limit global warming to 2°C?
- Shouldn’t we wait until the global financial crisis is resolved?
- Will Oxfam continue to work on climate change after 2009?
- Is nuclear power the solution to climate change?
- Do Fairtrade products contribute to emissions because they come from developing countries?
- You have an advert running online that is counting up the people threatened by climate
change. How did you reach that number?
What is climate change?
Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that there have been changes in the global climate since the early 1900s and that t hese climate changes, and future climate change predicted over the next century, are largely due to human activities and excessive greenhouse-gas emissions, which are warming up the Earth. This is climate change, often referred to as ‘global warming’.
Is climate change really happening?
Yes. In the last 20 years in particular, there has been an increase in some kinds of extreme weather events, notably erratic rainfall, contributing to floods and droughts, as well as rising sea levels and seasonal unpredictability. The result of these climate changes is failed harvests, disappearing islands, destroyed homes, water scarcity and deepening health crises. And that means millions upon millions of people who were already struggling are finding it even more difficult to get food, water and shelter.
Why is Oxfam working on climate change?
Because the effects of global climate change are already having a devastating impact on people’s lives. Extreme weather events are destroying homes, schools, crops and animals – the foundations of everyday life. Climate change is also throwing the seasons out of sync, causing crops to fail and water supplies to dry up. Extreme weather is pushing people backwards as they strive for progress. In short, Oxfam works on the causes and effects of climate change because the people we work with are being hit first and worst. – and it seems that worse is to come.
When did Oxfam start working on climate change?
Oxfam has been concerned about climate change for over 25 years. In 1983, Oxfam produced Weather Alert, a briefing paper that recorded the human impacts of various climate anomalies affecting our programmes around the world. I n 1992, Oxfam discussed the special threat that climate change posed to people living in poverty, along with other environmental crises highlighted at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Brazil. For the last 10 years Oxfam has been increasing it’s work around climate change. S o much of our work and expertise – for example, responding to and preparing for disasters, or helping farmers to get better yields from their crops – is now inextricably linked with the changing climate.
Is climate change already having an impact on Oxfam’s work?
Yes. Oxfam staff and partners are seeing for themselves how poor people are being hit first and worst by the impacts of climate change, despite them being least responsible. The people we work with are reporting ever-changing and unpredictable weather patterns, contributing to deeper and longer lasting floods in South Asia; irregular rainfall in Mozambique, or hotter temperatures which are melting glaciers in Bolivia and Tajikistan. Because of all this, so much of our work now needs to include the impact of the changing climate.
What is Oxfam doing about climate change?
We’re already helping people to cope with severe weather events, and also plan for the consequences of future climate change. Like everything that we do, our climate change work focuses on three core areas:
- Humanitarian
We are constantly responding to disasters such as our emergency relief efforts after floods in Bangladesh. Climatic hazards like these are expected to increase in frequency over the coming years and decades. What’s more, we’re making sure these communities are better prepared for extreme weather events in the future, too. That means things like raising homes up on stilts, or improving early warning systems for when disasters strike.
- Development
Helping communities to adapt to climate change is a key part of our development work. In Thailand, rice farmers are innovating with on-farm water harvesting systems for irrigation and are diversifying their crops to protect their livelihoods against drought. And in Pakistan, we are supporting farmers to reclaim fields damaged by salt water and helping them to have fresh water for their fields and household use.
- Campaigning
We’re demanding urgent and decisive action on climate change from world leaders that results in a global deal that is just and fair for all people, not just those with power and money.
What does 'climate change adaptation' mean?
Climate change adaptation means communities, supported by governments, taking early action to reduce the damaging impact that climate change could have on their lives. Oxfam is already carrying out work to help people adapt to the impacts of climate change. For example, in southern Africa farmers are planting faster maturing crop varieties to make the most of unreliable rains. In Vietnam, we are supporting coastal communities to adapt to sea level rise (which is making water sources saline) and erratic rain by helping them grow new crops and use new techniques, facilitating access to early warning systems, and providing fresh water for household use.
What does 'climate change mitigation' mean?
Climate change mitigation means reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Oxfam believes that it is vital that greenhouses gas emissions are cut dramatically – by 80 per cent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels – in order to limit global warming to as far below 2°C as possible.
Why do we need to limit global warming to 2°C?
The global average temperature has risen almost 0.8°C over pre-industrial levels and is already causing serious climate change impacts for millions of people. If global temperatures rise more than 2°C over pre-industrial levels, the climate impact on water resources, food production, sea levels, and ecosystems is predicted to be catastrophic for billions of people. At that point, scientists believe that climate change would begin to have an overwhelmingly negative impact on societies worldwide and on the ecosystems on which we all depend, with a heightened risk of extreme climatic events resulting in extreme droughts, floods and heat waves.
Shouldn’t we wait until the global financial crisis is resolved?
The battle to halt the current financial crisis is not separate to the fight against climate change. A new, green economy can create jobs while reducing carbon emissions. It does mean making tough decisions, but that is part of the deal already in this economic climate. The two must go together.
Will Oxfam continue to work on climate change?
Absolutely. This is a long-term issue for Oxfam and ultimately the number one threat to overcoming poverty and suffering.
Is nuclear power the solution to climate change?
In general, we believe energy solutions must:
- Be consistent with an urgent and radical shift to a low carbon future consistent with what action on climate change requires;
- Contribute to delivering modern energy services to the billions of people around the world who do not currently have access to them; and,
- Be cost-effective under conditions that ensure the above.
Do Fairtrade products contribute to emissions because they come from developing countries?
Yes, but it is miniscule. For a start, only a tiny proportion of Fairtrade goods are transported by air. The vast majority are shipped, which has a much lower carbon footprint. Fairtrade also promotes sustainable agricultural practices and encourages farmers to invest in environmental protection programmes too, which reduce emissions at farm level.
Given that Fairtrade products make such an overwhelmingly positive contribution to poor producers' livelihoods and make a negligible contribution to climate change, Oxfam does not believe that the poorest and least responsible people should pay first for the need to lower global CO2 emissions.
The first things we can do are to make the necessary changes to what we do in our homes, how we travel, and how we make governments more responsible in tackling the problem.
You have an advert running online that is counting up the people threatened by climate change. How did you reach that number?
It is reasonable to assume that hundreds of millions of people are now threatened by additional exposure to climate-related hazards as a result of climate change. While it is difficult to pin down a single aggregate estimate, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) identification and assessment of key vulnerabilities includes the following estimates for risks this century of our current, business-as-usual trajectory of escalating greenhouse gas emissions :
- Globally, hundreds of millions of people would face reduced water supplies;
- Regionally, hundreds of millions more at risk of water stress (in Africa), and more than a hundred million people at risk of water shortages (in Latin America);
- In Asia alone, about 1 billion people would face risks from reduced agricultural production potential, reduced water supplies or increases in extremes events.
Even more concerning, the IPCC also said that, “On balance, the current generation of aggregate estimates in the literature is more likely than not to understate the actual costs of climate change.” Further, the lack of an adequate political response now means we are on-track for nearly twice as much warming as the models these estimate reflect counted on. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that warming since the 1970s “was already causing over 140,000 excess deaths annually by the year 2004." (WHO factsheet N266, January 2010, Climate Change and Health).
Around the world, Oxfam has seen how the vulnerabilities of poor communities put them especially at risk from climate-related hazards, which are still increasing in intensity and frequency as a result of climate change. In this sense, all of the billion-plus people living in extreme poverty around the world are especially threatened by climate change.
For the purpose of this counter, however, we have limited our definition of ‘people threatened’ to just the number of people actually displaced by sudden-onset climate-related disasters. In 2008, over 20 million people were displaced by these kinds of disasters (Source: ‘Monitoring disaster displacement in the context of climate change’, UNOCHA/IDMC, Sept 2009).
While we can’t be sure all of these people would not have been displaced in a world without climate change, scientists continue to demonstrate how the frequency and intensity of small, and medium-sized, disasters of this kind is growing as a result of climate change, and therefore those people affected are threatened with even greater suffering. (As suggested by John, source to statement by the Royal Society, National Environment Research Council and the Meteorological Office, November 2009, see below#)
Displacement figures provide an indication of numbers of people currently most vulnerable to climate related disasters. It is a conservative estimate. Given the on-going absence of resolute political responses, it is likely that we shall see similar numbers – 20 million people – displaced by sudden onset climate related disasters in 2010, and the threat of displacement is growing because of climate change.
Our counter therefore represents the increasing number of people threatened in the most extreme way by climate change since 1st January 2010. This representative number increases as time progresses.
The representative rate of increase is calculated by dividing the number of seconds in one year (31,536,000) by the number of people threatened (20,000,000) to give a rate of one person every 1.58 seconds. At the point at which the advert went live, midnight 23rd May 2010, the counter was set at 7,835,616 – a representation of the number of people threatened so far in 2010.
* We expect some of the most significant impacts of climate change to occur when natural variability is exacerbated by long-term global warming, so that even small changes in global temperatures can produce damaging local and regional effects. Year on year the evidence is growing that damaging climate and weather events — potentially intensified by global warming — are already happening and beginning to affect society and ecosystems. This includes:
- In the UK, heavier daily rainfall leading to local flooding such as in the summer of 2007;
- Increased risk of summer heat waves such as the summers of 2003 across the UK and Europe;
- Around the world, increasing incidence of extreme weather events with unprecedented levels of damage to society and infrastructure;
- Sea level rises leading to dangerous exposure of populations in, for example, Bangladesh, the Maldives and other island states;
- Persistent droughts, leading to pressures on water and food resources, and the increasing incidence of forest fires in regions where future projections indicate long term reductions in rainfall, such as South West Australia and the Mediterranean.
*Global warming vs climate change
While the meanings of climate change and global warming are, to all intents and purposes in most cases, interchangeable, Oxfam generally prefers the term ‘climate change’ over global warming. This is because the effects of global warming are not limited to increasing temperatures – they also include sea level rise, acidification of oceans, changes in rainfall patterns and so on. While millions of poor people are experiencing more intense drought, millions more are suffering from other extreme weather and climatic events, such as floods and rising sea levels.
What Oxfam is doing
![Demand a fair deal. [Photo credit: Ainhoa Goma]](images/shouting_copenhagen.jpg "Demand a fair deal. [Photo credit: Ainhoa Goma]")
Demanding a fair deal
After the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit, a fair deal for the world's poorest people cannot come fast enough. We're keeping up the pressure on rich countries to make vital progress on reducing their carbon emissions and to support the efforts of people living in poverty to protect themselves from the devastating effects of climate change. Together we can get the process back on track this year.
Working with communities
We're also working directly with communities seriously affected by climate change worldwide. Watch the animation opposite to discover some of the innovative ways Oxfam is helping communities. Want to help? Donate now.
For more detailed information, read Oxfam’s climate change FAQs
The human cost
The poorest people hit first and hardest
Climate change is first and foremost a human story. The poorest people in the world are already being hit hard by climate change. Failed harvests. Unprecedented floods. Dried-up water supplies. As a result of climate change, critical weather patterns that used to be reliable are now anything but – with disastrous consequences.
Floods in Bangladesh
Rising sea levels due to climate change mean that floods in Bangladesh are getting deeper and longer-lasting. That means more communities and families at risk. And more tragic stories like Sufia's.
Drought in East Africa
Over 20 million people in East Africa are enduring the worst humanitarian crisis the region has seen in more than a decade. Vital rains are becoming increasingly unpredictable, or failing altogether under the growing influence of climate change.
