Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Oxfam warns against raiding funds for climate change

Oxfam is warning against diverting funds away from poverty fighting to pay for climate change funding.

A new report from Oxfam estimates that 4.5 million children could die if funds are raided from poverty fighting measures, and are used instead for global warming. Oxfam is calling for the international community to raise another $50 billion dollars a year for environment measures.

From this Press Association article that we found at The Guardian, we read more of Oxfam's warning against aid "raiding".

And it says the money must be provided in addition to the 0.7% of GDP developed nations have pledged as aid to improve the lives of people in some of the world's poorest countries – or efforts to tackle poverty will stall.

A report by Oxfam warns that diverting $50bn from existing aid pledges to fund climate measures would lead to the death of 4.5 million children, while 75 million fewer youngsters would be likely to go to school and 8.6 million fewer people would have access to HIV/Aids treatment.

It could prove a major setback to efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals which aim to end hunger and poverty and boost education, health, gender equality and environmental sustainability by 2015, the report warns.

Oxfam said it was already seeing people going without food, pulling their children out of school or selling livestock to pay for debts caused by failing crops and other climate-related problems.

According to the aid agency, just three countries including the UK are in favour of additional funding for climate measures – and the issue could prove to be a deal breaker in the upcoming crunch talks aimed at agreeing global emissions cuts in Copenhagen in December.

A failure by developed countries to address the problems surrounding adaptation funding has led to distrust between the two sides and could undermine efforts to secure a deal to cut emissions.

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