Oxfam America Blog

Loko Dadacha. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

After two weeks away from the office on a personal trip to Japan, I came back today to find hundreds of emails piled up in my inbox. But once I plowed my way through the spam and the endless Outlook meeting invitations, I discovered something really exciting: a link to Oxfam’s new short video about how climate change affects poor people in countries like El Salvador, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and the US.

 This video holds a special significance for me, since back in August I was lucky enough to tag along as a crew filmed some of this footage in southern Ethiopia. In many ways, that trip (my first visit to Africa) is still very much on my mind: I can’t read an article about climate change without thinking about the striking effects of drought in those rural communities—and the amazing strength of the local people who are fighting back against the crisis.

One of those people is Loko Dadacha, a widow and mother of six who’s taken on a leadership role in helping her community prepare for droughts. Having read my colleague Coco’s stories about her, I have to admit I was a little bit awed by meeting Loko in person, not to mention impressed by her patience as a film crew and a crowd of Oxfam staffers followed her every move for an entire day.

“If you ask me what I wish… I would say I wish to see pasture growing, to have enough water. I wish to do things for myself—to be self-reliant,” says Loko near the end of this two-minute video. Her words really capture the way these communities are facing the massive changes in the climate: with toughness, determination, and incredible resilience.

Check out the video here:

Mud and debris fill the streets of communities in El Salvador following days of heavy rain that triggered landslides and floods. Photo by CORDES

More than 100 people are dead in El Salvador following days of torrential rain that triggered floods and landslides. Over the weekend, the first emails hit from colleagues. Then wire service stories started showing up in newspapers around the country. This morning, I have spent the past hour emailing with my colleague Tjarda in San Salvador: Thousands of people have flocked to shelters. Some have seen their houses washed away by the raging waters, and many will return home to widespread damage.

It’s hard to fathom the devastation that rain can cause, but in a poor country where many of its seven million citizens live in precarious locations—in low-lying areas prone to flooding, or along steep hillsides whose fronts slip away when water-logged—the destruction can be sweeping.

And one of the worst consequences of flooding is the pollution of drinking water. Read the rest of this entry »

Loko Dadacha walks up to six hours, round trip, during times of drought to fetch water for her family. Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America

Our water bill came the other day. It was about 100 bucks—a spike from the month before and it left us scratching our heads. Where did all that water go? We hardly know because here, with water, it’s easy come, easy go. Turn on the tap and it gushes—hot, cold, or just right. It couldn’t require less effort. Read the rest of this entry »

Terraces around the village of Ashenge have been built to help conserve the soil. Photo by Marc Cohen/Oxfam America

Marc Cohen is Oxfam America’s senior researcher on humanitarian policy and climate change. Here’s his account of a recent visit to northern Ethiopia where famine struck a quarter century ago.

Twenty-five years ago, Michael Buerk’s dramatic BBC footage from Korem, in northern Ethiopia, brought a devastating famine to the world’s attention. Tens of thousands of people had sought refuge from war and drought in the town. Every 20 minutes, a camp resident died from hunger and related diseases. Buerk called Korem “the closest thing to hell on earth.”

Last year, I traveled to Korem while working on a research project about decentralization in Ethiopia and how that affects men and women farmers’ access to services. My colleagues and I arrived in the town just as the regional Orthodox Christian patriarch was inaugurating a large new church; hundreds of people had turned out for the colorful ceremony. This celebration was a big contrast with the grim images of 1984.

But it was a meeting with Merzeneb Firkado—her first name means “honey from heaven”—that made me realize how much has changed for people in the Korem area since that terrible period. Read the rest of this entry »

A woman gathers water from the Dawa River in southern Ethiopia. With drought sweeping the region, clean drinking water sources are becoming fewer and farther between. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

Last night a colleague emailed me a copy of a really powerful speech by Rajenda K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the 2007 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. At the 45th Annual Nobel Conference in Minnesota earlier this week, Pachauri talked about water—a topic that struck me as particularly important right now, given the drought sweeping through East Africa and my own recent experiences visiting drought-affected communities in Ethiopia.

“At one level the world’s water is like the world’s wealth. Globally, there is more than enough to go round. The problem is that some countries get a lot more than others,” Pachauri said.

He also emphasized the link between climate change and water, and the fact that scarce resources can lead to conflicts in already-fragile areas.

“Due to the very large number of people that may be affected, food and water scarcity may be the most important health consequences of climate change,” Pachauri said. “There is no more crucial issue to human society than the future of water on this planet… We must work diligently to see that the worst effects don’t come to pass. We have very little time. Unless we act with a sense of urgency, there will certainly be conflict and a disruption of peace.”

The powerful undersea earthquake that struck near West Sumatra on September 30 killed at least 1,000 people and destroyed homes, bridges, and roads in Padang and villages north of the city. Oxfam’s Kate Thwaites describes the complex logistics of providing emergency aid to the Indonesian seaport.

There’s a strange feeling in Padang as the city begins to pick itself up almost a week after the devastating earthquake.

To a visitor like me, parts of the city look almost normal – houses are still standing, traffic seems to be moving again. Read the rest of this entry »

A resident searches for victims under a collapsed hotel in Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra island. Photo by Reuters/Crack Palinggi, courtesy of www.alertnet.org

At a powwow here this morning, fund-raisers, press officers, and writers—not quite believing the cascade of bad news–huddled over the headlines sprawled across a table in one of the cubicles: “Quakes Ravage Sumatra and Samoas,” said one.

“Tsunami Came Too Fast for Warnings to Reach All,” said another.

“Typhoon Eases, Leaving More Than 300 Dead,” said a third.

And this one, which summed up the shock of it all best:  “Week of Tragedy for Asia.”

It’s a week that has left us here at Oxfam racing to help meet the needs of some of the countless people who have seen their homes crash down around them following the earthquake that hit Sumatra, their villages flattened by the tsunami that swept into Samoa and Tonga, and all that’s familiar washed away in the flooding unleashed by Typhoon Ketsana  as it roared across the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Read the rest of this entry »