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In response to President Obama’s climate plan announcement scheduled for this afternoon Gawain Kripke, research and policy director for Oxfam America said: 

Paris has been a landmark agreement, but it won’t be the last. The political world is waking up to what a transition away from fossil fuels looks like. But it has only started to understand the scale of the challenge to adapt to the impact of climate change on our food system, our humanitarian system, our economies and ultimately the livelihoods of hundreds of millions around the world. For the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, the struggle for climate justice continues. 

Nearly 90% of Somalia is now in a severe drought, following three consecutive failed rain seasons. Some areas facing their driest season in 40 years. Nearly 3.5 million people are already acutely food insecure and millions more are now at risk of going hungry by the beginning of next year.

In its proposed new Renewable Energy Directive, the European Commission has given in to the pressure of the biofuel industry lobby at the expense of people and the climate. The proposal would allow EU countries to rely on food-based biofuels to meet their 2030 climate and energy targets, notwithstanding strong evidence of their harmful impact on communities and the environment.

The amount of money needed for UN humanitarian appeals involving extreme weather events like floods or drought is now eight times higher than 20 years ago — and donors are failing to keep up, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. For every $2 needed for UN weather-related appeals, donor countries are only providing $1.

On the shape of the new 2015 climate agreement being negotiated this week, Tracy Carty, Oxfam Climate Change Policy Adviser, said:

All countries must use the COP20 Summit in Lima to resolve the impasse over “climate finance,” and make success possible at the critical Paris talks in December 2015, says international agency Oxfam.

In response to the World Bank Group today issuing a statement announcing the discontinuation of its Doing Business report, Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: “It's a welcome move and about time the World Bank scrapped its Doing Business report, a global competitiveness index that encouraged governments to adopt destructive policies that worsen inequality, like slashing labor regulations and corporate taxes."

There is likely to be a climate deal in Paris. The emission pledges that more than 150 governments have put on the table this year show that global climate ambition is increasing. In this briefing Oxfam looks at potential game-changers on finance and mitigation ambition that could avert these costs for the world’s poorest people.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund need to ditch the ‘trickle down’ economics of the past and lead the fight against inequality if they are serious about the new target to end extreme poverty by 2030.