What Oxfam is doing
Photo: Nic Maclellan/OxfamAUS
We’re already helping vulnerable people in developing countries cope with natural disasters and the impacts of climate change. But we’ve stepped up our work to focus on helping affected communities prepare and adapt to future climate change impacts as well.
Our climate change work focuses on four areas:
1. Providing emergency humanitarian support
A significant part of our work is in responding to natural disasters that can be linked to climate change, like our emergency work in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. We’re also focused on ensuring vulnerable communities are prepared for extreme weather events in the future, by establishing plans to manage disasters. Deaths from floods in Bangladesh have dramatically dropped because of improved disaster management planning.
2. Helping poor communities adapt to climate change
We’re working to help communities adapt to climate change. In South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province along with a local partner we’ve helped create a bore hole to provide water. It is hoped that the bore hole will support a community garden.
We’re raising awareness of the impacts of climate change on our Pacific neighbours so that solutions can be found and assistance given for them to adapt to climate change, including planning for the relocation of climate refugees.
3. Campaigning for strong global action on climate change
We believe that we need a global solution to climate change because we’re all in this together. So we’re working with other organisations as part of the tck tck tck coalition to ensure that the meeting of world leaders in Copenhagen in December 2009 results in a global agreement that avoids dangerous climate change.
This means stronger emission reduction targets in developed countries of at least 40% by 2020. It also means that rich developed countries, such as Australia, need to contribute their fair share to a United Nations fund to assist developing countries to cut their emissions and adapt to climate change
4. Helping women cope with climate change
Women in developing countries are particularly affected by climate change because of the roles they play. Women are usually the ones who grow the family’s food, fetch fuel and water, and raise the children. During drought this means that they’re forced to travel further to get clean water, and when crops are destroyed or children fall sick – they have to find ways to keeping their families alive and healthy.
We’re working hard to address the problems women in developing countries face as a result of climate change by raising awareness of the powerful roles that women play in developing communities. Sisters on the Planet looks at the lives of six remarkable women who are taking control in their own communities and leading the fight against climate change.
Learn more
- Australian Climate Hearings - watch video testimony from people impacts by cliamte change
- Sisters on the Planet – how women are fighting climate change
- Read about the impacts of climate change on our Pacific neighbours
Take action
- Find out what you can do right now to help stop dangerous climate change.
