Climate change

The majority of women in the South have a close and complex relationship to their surroundings. They are profoundly affected by environmental degradation, as they depend directly on natural resources for their livelihoods. Their need for access to these resources often goes unrecognised, as does their role as producers and environmental managers. At times of […]

Oxfam works with groups of poor people in many parts of the world. For most of them, the quality of their lives – indeed their very survival – depends fundamentally upon the health of the natural environment. Yet, for many of these people – such as the farmers of Burkina Faso in the Sahel, or […]

Millions of the world’s poorest people are threatened by freak weather conditions. This year’s unprecedented climatic extremes brought drought to the rich world hitting agriculture in Australia and South Africa particularly hard and substantially reducing the 1983 grain harvest in the USA. England experienced its hottest July on record.   In the poor world a […]