Search results

Thirty-two of the world’s largest companies stand to see their profits jump by $109 billion more in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic lays bare an economic model that delivers profits for the wealthiest on the back of the poorest, according to a new Oxfam report today.

Responding to the announcement that the Cayman Islands has been removed from the EU tax haven blacklist, Chiara Putaturo, Oxfam’s EU Tax Policy Advisor, said: “While we welcome the addition of Barbados, removing the Cayman Islands, one of the world’s most notorious tax havens, from the EU tax haven blacklist is further proof that the process isn’t working."    

Today, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, proposed the introduction of a cap on revenues of companies producing electricity with low costs and a solidarity contribution from fossil fuel companies. The revenues from these unexpected profits will be directed to people and businesses to help them adapt to the recent increase in energy prices as well as to invest in clean home-grown energy sources.

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.

Oxfam today publishes its regular six-month update (to March 2021) of its Safeguarding and Culture Improvement Plan that it set up two years ago. The headlines include a new governance structure, that begins July 2021. It will help to separate management from governance and promote accountability, diversity and effectiveness. The new Board will have four independent members including as chair.

Coal plants in the G7 are on track to cost the world $450 billion a year by the end of the century and reduce crops by millions of tons as they fuel the gathering pace of climate change.

The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) has quietly divested from New Globe Schools, better known as Bridge International Academies (BIA), a for-profit school chain operating in four African countries and India. The IFC has invested $13.5 million in BIA since 2014, with the intention of supporting the company’s expansion to other countries.

With a recent upsurge in fighting in Yemen, the forthcoming rainy season and tightening of borders due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, there’s no end in sight to the daily toll of death, disease and displacement five years after the conflict escalated, Oxfam warned today.

Oxfam commended the World Bank for connecting the need to tackle climate change with the urgent fight to end poverty. In a new report, the Bank warned that more than 100 million additional people could be pushed into poverty by crop failures, floods, hunger, and other shocks caused by climate change. 

Climate change alert: Oxfam report reveals spiralling costs of 3 degree compared to 2 degrees warming.