Press releases

The World Bank's $200bn climate investment announcement at the UN Climate Conference COP24 is welcome, but must be new money that can help tackle poverty.

"We’re concerned that too much of the focus is on the ‘insurance’ aspect; insurance doesn't actually reduce risk, and it could be unaffordable for the communities it's meant to cover," said Tracy Carty.

Almost half of the population of Timor-Leste’s capital has been impacted by severe flooding, according to government figures, after heavy rains fell on Dili and nearby provinces last week. Cyclone Seroja took the people of Timor-Leste by surprise, with the small nation previously not within the range of such extreme weather events. Oxfam in Timor-Leste’s Associate Country Director, Annie Sloman, said the impact of climate change was undeniable.

Oxfam joins world leaders, civil society and people around the world to celebrate the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals by world leaders at the United Nations, but cautions that progress toward them must be tangible, political and disruptive. 

Progress achieved during the past two weeks at Bonn will come to nothing if developed countries don’t scale up their ambition. The mood has been more constructive but the disagreements that derailed the Copenhagen talks are still to be resolved.

Just hours before the UN climate talks taking place in Durban (South Africa) wrap up, Oxfam Global Ambassador and photographer Helena Christensen urges ministers to agree a deal which delivers for the world’s poorest people who are already suffering from the impact of climate change.

Today Oxfam praised the CEO’s of eight of the ten biggest food and beverage companies in the world for joining together with the heads of some 400 major companies to call on world leaders, “to act with determination, leadership and ambition to secure an ambitious and legally binding global climate deal.”

Negotiators avoided a show-down over crunch issues like finance and increasing near term emissions cuts, but they are only delaying the inevitable. A clearer mandate from Heads of State and ministers is needed to ignite the talks and ensure key questions are answered.

Wealthy nations are expected to fall up to $75 billion short of fulfilling their long-standing pledge to mobilize $100 billion each year from 2020 to 2025 to help the most vulnerable countries adapt to the dangerous effects of climate change and reduce their emissions, according to estimates by Oxfam today.

In response to the decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the Grand Chamber’s first-ever climate-related cases (Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others, and Carême v. France), Evelien van Roemburg, Head of Oxfam’s European Union office said: “European judges have ruled that a government’s failure to do enough to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions violates its population’s human rights. This is a positive step and allows people to require their governments to put in place effective climate regulations and carbon budgets. But the judges did not challenge Switzerland’s decision to give itself almost three more decades to reach net zero emissions, even though people around the world are being harmed now by the climate crisis.”