climate

Europe’s wealthiest are driving the bloc’s emissions while ordinary Europeans make the steepest cuts, according to new Oxfam research published ahead of COP30. This research also comes amidst the EU watering down its own climate ambition. 

As the EU scales back its climate ambition, new Oxfam research reveals the stark carbon inequality in the EU: Europe’s wealthiest are increasing their emissions, while ordinary Europeans have made the biggest cuts. The report highlights three key findings: Europe’s wealthiest are burning through our climate budget: the richest 10% of Europeans produce as much carbon as the bottom 50% combined. Carbon cuts are driven by ordinary Europeans, while Europe’s elite keep polluting: emissions have fallen. The bottom 50% of Europeans reduced their emissions by 27%, while the richest 0.1% increased theirs by 14%. To stay on the 1.5°C pathway, the EU must tackle the excessive emissions of Europe’s richest: everyone must cut their emissions, but the richest must go much further. The research shows that, to stay within the 1.5°C limit, the bottom 50% would need to cut their emissions in half, the top 10% by 90%, the top 1% by 97%, and the top 0.1% by 99%. 2024 was the first year that average global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Yet, since the European elections, the EU has scaled back its climate ambitions, failing to submit its climate plan before the COP30 deadline and watering down climate legislation in the name of simplification. Oxfam calls on the EU to ramp up its ambition for emission reduction, with measures aimed at Europe’s wealthiest, to avoid a climate catastrophe and reduce climate inequality.

Ahead of the major international climate conference COP30 in Belem, Brazil, new Oxfam research finds that the super-rich are blowing through the world’s remaining carbon budget.

Oxfam leaders, experts, and partners are joining the UN 80th General Assembly and Climate Week in New York, hosting and attending events and releasing reports and statements focused on gender, humanitarian crises with a focus on Gaza, climate action, UN reform, and more. Oxfam will be urging global leaders to take bold decisions and action as they deliberate on the pressing issues of our time.

Oxfam water engineers are having to drill deeper, more expensive and harder-to-maintain water boreholes used by some of the poorest communities around the world, more often now only to find dry, depleted or polluted reservoirs. 

The richest 1 percent have burned through their share of the annual global carbon budget —the amount of CO2 that can be added to the atmosphere without pushing the world beyond 1.5°C of warming— within the first 10 days of 2025, reveals new Oxfam analysis. 

In reaction to the UN's 2024 edition of the SOFI report, Eric Munoz, Oxfam’s food policy expert, said: “Global hunger remains stuck at shamefully high levels, driven by many reasons that together become convenient excuses for our governments to avoid decisive action. 

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.”   
 

In response to the United Nations Environment Program’s Adaptation Gap Report 2023, Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International’s Climate Change Policy Lead, said: “The report underlines how the gap in adaptation funding —at its ‘highest ever’ amid accelerating climate breakdown— must be addressed with the utmost urgency next month in Dubai."

In reaction to the publicaiton today of the FAO’s “State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World 2023” report, stating that up to 783 million people faced hunger in 2022, and that 600 million persons will be chronically undernourished in 2030, Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam International Food Policy Lead said:  “It is unforgivable for governments to watch millions of people going hungry in a world of plenty, as they put the interests of mega-rich agribusinesses and energy companies before those of the most vulnerable people and widen the inequality gap.