New Zealand

Help farming curb climate breakdown

Bolder climate action. More sustainable farms. Better quality of life across the Pacific.

What's the problem?

The government’s current efforts will not protect us or communities in the Pacific from runaway climate destruction, or ensure that everyone has access to good, local food in the future. It doesn’t have to be this way.

The unfortunate reality is that agriculture is responsible for 48% of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. The only way for New Zealand to play our part in keeping within the crucial temperature limit of 1.5°C is if the government does more to reduce emissions in this area and support more farmers to transition to sustainable food production.

Right now, the government does not reward those farmers already making changes, giving unsustainable farming practices a free pass to pollute. This has propped up an intensive model, where often the land is overloaded with cows and chemicals, polluting waterways and causing climate pollution to skyrocket.

Communities across the Pacific are bearing the brunt of this inaction with more frequent superstorms and heightened food insecurity.

What's the solution?

Key decisions in coming months can change things. We must make the government’s new climate plan set a bold 2030 climate target, create a strong incentive for sustainable food production, and fund the infrastructure that will help farmers transition.

This is an opportunity to adjust the industry with our largest climate footprint into one that is sustainable, healthy, and positioned for success in the future. Whether it’s growing kai for the marae, produce for a local farmers’ market or specialty goods for export, we can have thriving farms that are in balance with the land, and play their part in curbing climate breakdown so that farmers on the frontlines of climate change can survive and thrive too.

Call on the government to step up New Zealand’s climate target by incentivising more sustainable farms! Sign the petition above.

Millions facing double disaster as second Covid wave overwhelms rural India

June 4, 2021

New Delhi: The second wave has left public healthcare in shambles. People have lost their lives due to lack of proper medical facilities and infrastructure. The situation is getting a little under control in the cities, but it is still very grim in rural India where there are issues related to access to medical facilities, hospitals, doctors, technically trained staff or testing facilities.

Around 65% of the total population of approximately 1.3 billion live in rural India, which hardly has rural health infrastructure. As per the Rural Health Statistics 2019, there is a shortfall of 43,736 Sub Centres (23 percent), 8764 Primary Health Centres/PHC (28 percent) and 2865 Community Health Centres/CHC (37 percent) across the country.

Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar said: “There was a time when we woke up every day to news of death of a friend, family, acquaintance. Villages were worse off – with no access to health care, no testing; in some cases, 20-25 people from a village died within a few days. No one in India has remained untouched by this pandemic. And most of these lives could have been saved if there was proper, adequate, and affordable healthcare for all.”

People outside the major cities do not have the same access to social media to reach out for help or raise awareness of what is happening. Lack of testing, healthcare facilities and postmortems mean large number of cases in rural communities are not being recorded.

Apart from a healthcare calamity, India was already reeling under economic stress. The sporadic lockdowns and containment zones mean that once again it is the informal sector workers who are going to be worst hit. Latest report from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) states that over 1 crore Indians lot their jobs in the second Covid wave and around 97% household incomes have fallen since the start of the pandemic last year.

Millions who slipped into poverty last year due to job losses are now facing another looming crisis: hunger. India already has the largest population facing food shortages in the world, with an estimated 189 million people in India already undernourished before the pandemic began

While healthcare is the primary focus at this point in time, Oxfam India is also reaching out to some of the most marginalised and vulnerable communities with food. In the long run we will work towards providing livelihood support to informal sector workers and their families.

Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar said: “We are reaching out to public healthcare institutions, district administrations and COVID Care Centres with medical equipment such as oxygen concentrators, patient monitoring systems, oximeters, oxygen nasal masks, and thermometers along with PPE kits and safety kits for frontline health workers. We will also reach the most marginalised and vulnerable communities with food, ration, and safety kits.”

Through Mission Sanjeevani, our COVID-19 response in the second wave, we have provided 96 Oxygen Concentrators, 155 Oxygen Cylinders (40 Lts), over 1200 Oxygen Nasal Masks, 12 BiPAP machines, over 5000 diagnostic tools/equipment of various types, 1630 PPE kits, 90 ICU beds, community safety kits and one month’s dry ration supply to 15,500 people so far.

In addition to this, Oxfam India plans to strengthen the rural health ecosystem, in some of the most marginalised and vulnerable communities, by providing the necessary tools, training and inexpensive equipment needed by frontline health workers like Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) for early identification of cases and timely referral to health centres, and hiring doctors, staff nurses and paramedics, wherever possible.

In the first month of our response to the second wave, we have provided support in Maharashtra, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh. While continuing to work in these states among the most marginalised and vulnerable communities, Oxfam India will also look at expanding to Bihar, Odisha, Assam, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Gujarat.

Notes to the Editors:

In the second wave, Oxfam India is working with the government and local administrations to deploy 7 Oxygen generation plants, 25 ventilators, 500 Oxygen concentrators, 3000 Oxygen cylinders (40-lts capacity), 11800 Oxygen nasal masks, 300 BiPAP machines, 1200 ICU beds, around 16000 diagnostic equipment of different types, and 19000 PPE kits. We are also aiming to provide one-month dry ration supply and community safety kits to 225,000 people.
Oxfam India also plans to train 35000 ASHA workers and provide them with medical kits for a larger community outreach to ensure Covid appropriate behaviour and also tackle the issue of vaccine hesitancy.
Since March 2020, Oxfam India has been working in 16 states, reaching the most marginalised and vulnerable with medical supplies, food kits, cooked meals, safety and PPE kits, cash, and livelihood trainings.

For more information, please contact:
David Bull
Oxfam Aotearoa
[email protected]

About Oxfam India

Oxfam India is a movement of people working to create a just and an equal India. We work to ensure that Adivasis, Dalits, Muslims, and women and girls have safe-violence free lives with freedom to speak their mind, equal opportunities to realise their rights, and a discrimination free future.

During the last five years, Oxfam India has responded to more than 35 humanitarian disasters across the country and directly provided relief to nearly 1.5 million people. Oxfam India’s humanitarian response is guided by the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalised communities in disaster affected areas.

More than a million COVID deaths in 4 months since G7 leaders failed to break vaccine monopolies

June 3, 2021

At the current vaccination rates, low income countries would be waiting 57 years for everyone to be fully vaccinated.

More than a million people have died from COVID since The Group of Seven (G7) leaders met back in February 2021. The leaders had made vague pledges to increase the global vaccine supply, but failed to collectively back the waiver of intellectual property rules and investment in manufacturing vaccines in developing countries.

As G7 Health Ministers meet today for talks ahead of the Leaders’ Summit next week, The People’s Vaccine Alliance is calling on the G7 to stop making empty promises and protecting the interests of pharmaceutical companies, and instead take urgent action to close the massive vaccine void between their nations and poorer countries.

New calculations from the Alliance, which includes Health Justice Initiative, Oxfam, and UNAIDS, found that last month people living in G7 countries were 77 times more likely to be offered a vaccine than those living in the world’s poorest countries. Between them, G7 nations were vaccinating at a rate of 4.6 million people a day in May, meaning, if this rate continues, everyone living in G7 nations should be fully vaccinated by 8 January 2022. At their current rate – vaccinating 63,000 people a day – it would take low income countries 57 years to reach the same level of protection.

Of the 1.77 billion doses of COVID vaccines given globally, just 0.3 per cent of COVID jabs have been given in low-income countries – despite the fact G7 and low-income countries have a similar population size.

Executive Director of Oxfam Aotearoa Rachael Le Mesurier said that although the world is holding its breath waiting for our G7 leaders to step up, we must not forget that the New Zealand government has a moral duty to build on the actions taken to date:

“New Zealand has been a leader during this terrible pandemic; across the globe, world leaders and whole populations are looking to us to see what we will do next. This is the perfect opportunity for our Prime Minister to use her position to help those in need.

“This is about real concrete support for the People’s Vaccine; this is about lifting the brakes and speeding up the production of vaccines faster so we can reach more people in need sooner. This is also about the massive amount of vaccines our own government has stockpiled – enough to vaccinate our population almost six times over. If we hold these vaccines back from those who urgently need them – we are just helping the virus mutate until there is a variant our vaccines can’t stop. New Zealand will not be safe until we are all safe.”

While some G7 members claim they have done their bit by pledging doses or funding to COVAX, the initiative, which was set up to help developing countries access COVID vaccines, is massively failing. COVAX has delivered less than a third of the doses it promised to by the end of May and the Alliance warned that at the current rate, it is likely to reach only 10 per cent of people at best in developing countries by the end of the year.

Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, said: “It is obscene that the UK, Germany and other rich countries, which are able to vaccinate their own people, are preventing poor countries from making the doses they need to save lives.

“The sad fact is developing countries cannot depend on COVAX or the good will of the pharma industry to save the lives of their people. G7 leaders must take this moment to stand on the right side of history by putting their full support behind the vaccine patent waiver supported by more than 100 countries. The G7 may be getting the vaccines they need but too much of the world is not and people are paying for patent protection with their lives.”

Of the G7 nations, only the US are backing the proposal at the WTO to waive intellectual property rights. The UK and Germany are opposing, while Canada, France, Japan and Italy are sat on the fence. This is despite the fact their public are strongly in favour of the idea, with polling showing that an average of 70 per cent of people across G7 nations believing that governments should ensure pharmaceutical companies share their formulas and technology, so that qualified manufacturers around the world can help increase the supply.

Dr Mohga Kamal-Yanni, Senior Health Policy Advisor to The People Vaccine Alliance, said: “The G7 must act now to force companies to share the vaccine technology and know-how with qualified manufacturers in developing countries in order to maximise supply.

“Last week the WHO has relaunched its COVID-19 Technology Access Pool to facilitate sharing vaccines technology, knowhow and intellectual property. The G7 must show a strong political support for the pool if they are serious about ending the pandemic. They must also announce funding to support technology transfer and manufacturing in developing countries. Every day they delay is a day that lives could be saved.”

-Ends-

For interview opportunities please contact:

David Bull – Oxfam Aotearoa
+64 274 179 724

Notes to Editors:

The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental organisation consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The heads of government of the member states, as well as the representatives of the European Union, meet at the annual G7 Summit. New Zealand is not a part of this group.

Since G7 leaders last met for a virtual summit on 19 February, 1,094,213 people have died from COVID, the equivalent of 8 people per minute, according to data from Our World in Data https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths

Vaccine supply and delivery data from Airfinity, Our World in Data, UNICEF and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Projections of how long vaccinations could take are based on the average rate of vaccinations from 1 – 25 May 2021.Calculations were made on 26 May 2021.

Between them, G7 nations are vaccinating at a rate of 4,630,533 people per day. At that rate it would take 227 days to fully vaccinate their entire population, until 8 January 2022, assuming everyone receives two doses. Between them, Low income countries are vaccinating at a rate of 62,772 people per day. At that rate it will take them 57 years to vaccinate their entire population, until 7 October 2078, assuming everyone receives two doses.

According to new calculations made by the People’s Vaccine Alliance using Our World In Data from 25 May, 1,774,959,169 vaccines have been administered globally. People living in G7 countries received 497,150,151 of these vaccines (28%) their combined population is 774,917,290. People living in low Income countries received 5,481,470 vaccines (0.31%), their combined population is 660,310,395.

For the month of May 497.15m doses were given in G7 countries, divided between 774m people = 0.6423 doses per person, 5.48mdoses were given in low income countries divided between 660m people = 0.0083 doses per person, 0.6423 divided by 0.0083 = 77.4 – therefore, last month people in G7 countries were 77x more likely to get a vaccine than those in poor countries.

The statistic that COVAX will only reach 10% of people in developing countries this year does not include India.

More information on G7 public opinion polling by the People’s Vaccine Alliance available here: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/05/an-average-of-7-in-10-across-g7-countries-think-their-governments-should-force-big-pharma-to-share-vaccine-know-how/

Oxfam reaction to 2021 Global Health Summit

May 24, 2021

Anna Marriott, Oxfam Health Policy Manager and Policy co-lead for the People’s Vaccine Alliance said:

The 2021 Global Health Summit ended today in danger of being judged an historical failure of global solidarity to tackle a Covid-19 pandemic that is still, around the world, in its first expanding phase and yet to peak. World leaders talked eloquently about the bottle-necks that are limiting vaccine manufacturing and supply, and the gross inequalities today of global vaccinations, but their solutions remain the same tired ones that have failed billions of people who remain unvaccinated and vulnerable to infection ahead.

Nine people are dying every minute while the vaccine stores of COVAX – a multilateral initiative to get vaccines to developing countries – lie empty. Rich nations again parroted the lines of the same pharmaceutical companies who’ve succeeded better in creating new vaccine billionaires among their CEOs and major shareholders than they have supplying enough stock. The trickle of charity promised at the summit today was the sound of a bucket of water being thrown on a forest fire.

Governments representing the vast majority of the world’s people are calling for an end to the corporate vaccine monopolies and demanding the mandatory sharing of the rights in order to produce more doses. But a handful of rich countries are continuing to put their relationships with big pharma ahead of ending this pandemic. Pharmaceutical corporations have had more than a year to voluntarily share their intellectual property and know-how but have instead put profits before people at every turn. Relying on just a handful of pharmaceutical corporations to make enough vaccines – and the sharing of crumbs of that supply to developing countries as charity – is an insult to the nurses and doctors on the front lines trying to save lives now.

G20 leaders have once again ceded control of this pandemic to a handful of pharmaceutical corporations who continue to dictate who will get a vaccine and live, and those who will not and may die as a result.

Oxfam reaction to the ceasefire in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel

May 24, 2021

Shane Stevenson, Oxfam Country Director for the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel said:  

“Finally, for the first of 12 consecutive nights, two million Palestinians in Gaza, including hundreds of thousands of traumatised children, can rest rather than lie awake in fear as bombs fly over their homes.  And civilians across Israel will be spared the threat of rocket attacks.

But this is not  a solution. This ceasefire will not change the occupation and denial of human rights which Palestinians are subjected to daily. This inhumane and brutal status quo has to stop, once and for all.  Oxfam calls on the parties to strictly observe this ceasefire, and for the international community to hold Israel and armed factions in Gaza accountable for any and all violations committed during and preceding this escalation of violence.  There must be a just and sustainable peace for all Israelis and Palestinians. Alleged war crimes committed in each round of violence must be investigated and prosecuted.   

This must be the last time Palestinians in Gaza are forced to again undertake the slow and painful process of rebuilding their destroyed homes, lives and livelihoods. Humanitarian aid that has been denied from entering Gaza until now must be allowed to enter immediately so that Oxfam and other aid organizations can understand the sheer scale of the needs and reach people who desperately need support to survive.  Humanitarian agencies like Oxfam have been supported by international governments and donors to work with Palestinians to rebuild after each round of violence, only to watch the results of these collective efforts destroyed time and again. The cycle of war followed by pledges of humanitarian aid can only be broken with concrete and meaningful political action by the international community to bring an end to the brutal, prolonged occupation, including a suffocating siege on the Gaza Strip.”

India’s Serum Institute: COVAX “closed” until Christmas

May 21, 2021

Late yesterday the Indian vaccine manufacturer, Serum Institute, issued a statement indicating that no further supplies of vaccine for COVAX (the facility to help developing countries access COVID vaccines) will be available until the end of the year.

Meanwhile, New Zealand has enough doses to vaccinate the population at least six times over. Oxfam New Zealand’s Jo Spratt says that there is a moral obligation for New Zealand to share some of the supply for countries like India who have been hit the hardest.

“As COVAX has been supplying vaccines to the world’s poorest countries, it is devastating to think that now these countries will have to wait even longer. This disheartening development really helps illustrate how important it is for Aotearoa to step up and share more of our vaccine stockpile.”

Responding to the announcement, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, Anna Marriott, said:

“While the vaccination of people in India should be a priority, given the horrific toll COVID is having there, it is a huge concern that COVAX won’t be receiving any more doses until Christmas, given that Serum Institute is producing the majority of its doses.

“For months, rich country leaders have said they’re doing their bit to ensure developing countries receive vaccines by pointing to COVAX, but now their supply has effectively been turned off for the rest of the year. This comes at a time when many developing countries are facing soaring infection and death rates.

“The current approach that relies on a few pharma monopolies and a trickle of charity through COVAX is failing and people are dying as a result. It is time for those who are currently opposing a suspension of intellectual property rules, like the UK and Germany, to follow President Biden’s leadership to get more vaccines to developing countries.

“As G20 leaders prepare to meet at the Global Health Summit later this week they should consider how history will judge them for leaving the decisions of who lives and who dies from COVID-19 in the hands of just a handful of hugely profitable and powerful pharmaceutical corporations.”

-Ends-

For more information and interviews:

David Bull
+64 27417 9724