Reports

This briefing paper explores how the failure to tackle climate change threatens all aspects of food security – availability, access, utilisation, and stability. The changing climate is already jeopardising gains in the fight against hunger, and it looks set to worsen. It threatens the production and distribution of food. It threatens people’s ability to access food by undermining livelihoods and destabilising prices, and it damages diets by harming human health and putting at risk the quality of food produced. Finally, the paper sets out how these impacts can be averted, through urgent action to avoid dangerous climate change, address our broken food system, and strengthen its resilience.

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Growing_Disruption.pdf

Only 1 per cent of the Afghan National Police is female. Although female police are vital for Afghan women to be able to report crimes and access desperately-needed justice, few women in Afghanistan will ever encounter one. Further action is urgently needed to recruit, train, retain and protect Afghan female police officers. This is critical for upholding the rights of Afghan women and girls and can contribute to sustainable peace and development efforts in Afghanistan

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Women and the Afghan police.pdf

By supporting small-scale agricultural producers, policy makers in governments and donor agencies can help some of the poorest people in the world to improve their livelihoods. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that most donor and government policies are currently biased towards large-scale agriculture at the expense of small-scale producers, women, and rural communities.

This briefing note draws on recent Oxfam research to describe specific examples of how policy makers can govern markets and incentivise commercial investment in agriculture that includes small-scale producers. Policy recommendations focus on three key principles: giving small-scale producers, particularly women, power in markets and in politics; protecting basic rights; and supporting inclusive markets.

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PowerRightsAndInclusiveMarkets.pdf

Bananas sold by Dole in New Zealand carry a sticker that says “Ethical Choice”. This research report undertaken by Philippines research organisations and released by Oxfam New Zealand, suggests that the treatment of workers on Dole’s Philippine banana plantations is anything but ethical. These are the plantations that supply bananas for the New Zealand market.

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Conditions in Philippine Banana Plantations Exporting to New Zealand.pdf

We need a new approach to risk and poverty reduction.

Major external risks, such as climate change and food price volatility, are increasing faster than attempts to reduce them. Many risks are dumped on poor people, and women face an overwhelming burden.

In many places of recurrent crises, the response of governments and the international aid sector is not good enough. A new focus on building resilience offers real promise to allow the poorest women and men to thrive despite shocks, stresses, and uncertainty – but only if risk is more equally shared globally and across societies. This will require a major shift in development work, which for too long has avoided dealing with risk. More fundamentally, it will require challenging the inequality that exposes poor people to far more risk than the rich.

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bp172-no-accident-resilience-inequality-risk-210513-summ-enembargoed.pdf

bp172-no-accident-resilience-inequality-risk-210513-enembargoed.pdf