Category: Food & climate change

With droughts in the Sahel, US and Russia, 2012 has seen rising food prices and hunger worsening. In the midst of the desert in Doha, we’ve seen another drought. A drought of climate action from rich countries who rather than responding to the challenges poised by climate change have once again failed to deliver on […] Read more »

Every UN climate conference has stories of powerful voices cutting through the noise and reminding delegates of the raw realities of what we are dealing with. Maria Timon is a woman from Kiribati who has been speaking out for many years on the challenges facing her community. On Friday she spoke at a side event […] Read more »

Some of you were lucky enough to attend our screening of The Island President at this year’s Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, featuring President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives in his fight against climate change. Since then, Mr Nasheed has been imprisoned and writes from his jail cell about the charges placed against him: […] Read more »

Oxfam Australia has welcomed the Government’s intention to join a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol, whose initial seven-year commitment period expired this year, provided the foundations for a rules-based, global response to climate change. Its continuation, by way of a second commitment period, provided the necessary legal and political bridge to the […] Read more »

From the food crisis in West Africa to drought in the US, from receding Arctic ice to a dying Great Barrier Reef, a changing climate has never felt more real. Over the next two weeks the Australian Government has an important choice to make. We’re rallying our supporters on Twitter to help make sure it […] Read more »

From receding Arctic ice to a dying Great Barrier Reef, from drought in the US, to the food crisis in West Africa, a changing climate has never felt more real. Last year governments agreed to start negotiations on a comprehensive global climate agreement designed to limit global warming to 2°C – considered the safe threshold […] Read more »

The countries of the world will sit down to vote overnight on who will become the newest non-permanent members of the Security Council. If Australia comes out a winner, it has the chance to play a key role in preventing conflict around the world, including in places where Australians are working directly on the ground, […] Read more »

The results are in. The Arctic summer melt record has not merely been broken. It’s been smashed – confounding experts and revealing that ice loss is happening far faster than models predicted. The previous record, set in 2007 was surpassed on 27 August, weeks before the end of the melt season. Since then we have […] Read more »

Negotiators are in Bangkok for another round of UN climate talks (30 Aug – 5 Sep). This is an “intersessional” – a less formal round and lower profile event than the annual Conference of the Parties (COP). It is the second intersessional since COP17 in Durban (with one having been held in Bonn in May) […] Read more »

Remember how you felt in 2007 when we belatedly ratified the Kyoto Protocol? The broad community support for our signing of Kyoto was accompanied by a strong sense of relief that finally Australia was onboard with international efforts to tackle climate change. In doing so, we provided hope to many of the world’s poorest and […] Read more »