droughts

Responding to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, Oxfam Climate Policy Lead Nafkote Dabi said: “Amid a world in parts burning, in parts drowning and in parts starving, the IPCC today tables the most compelling wake-up call yet for global industry to switch from oil, gas and coal to renewables."

Oxfam is preparing for a potential response as swarms of locusts sweep across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia and are likely to grow 500 times bigger by June to neighboring Uganda and South Sudan. The plagues are hitting the East African region where food insecurity has already reached record levels.

More than 52 million people in 18 countries across southern, eastern and central Africa are facing up to crisis levels of hunger as a result of weather extremes, compounded by poverty and conflict.

 

Agriculture is highly sensitive to climate variability and weather extremes.

New research shows that the full impact of climate change on future food prices is being underestimated.

Climate change is making extreme weather much more likely. As the 2012 drought in the USA shows, extreme weather means extreme food prices.