Friend –

A new report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says climate change is having severe impacts on the land that people rely on to feed their families. Changing rainfall patterns and rising temperatures mean drier and less fertile lands where fewer crops survive every planting season. Ultimately, more farmers could be forced to migrate to find suitable conditions to grow food.

Meanwhile, our global industrialized food system is only making the climate crisis worse. Agriculture, forestry, and land use contribute 22 percent of global greenhouse emissions.

These dynamics also create serious human rights issues. The production of palm oil, an ingredient commonly found in chips and cookies, has been responsible for pushing communities off their land in countries from Peru to Indonesia.

The situation is dire. But there's hope, friend. With your support, Oxfam is working on diverse solutions that jointly fight poverty and climate change in more than 90 countries around the world.

Land is not just a source of carbon emissions. Soil and forests can capture and store carbon – in fact, good land management can help reduce emissions while supporting adaptation to climate change and strengthening resilience and food security among vulnerable communities.

In Bolivia, for example, Oxfam has supported a community-led land management and agroforestry initiative that has helped restore degraded land, build soil carbon, and strengthen the livelihoods of families. This model, known as adaptive territorial management, helps farmers to employ more sustainable and productive methods of farming, like encouraging biodiversity through planting different species of trees along-side growing crops. This not only generates additional income for the local farmers, including women, but minimizes the effects of climate change.

Preserving natural ecosystems – and supporting the indigenous peoples that steward them – are another vital part of the solution. Indigenous peoples and rural communities inhabit over 50 percent of the world's lands, yet only 10 percent of those lands are recognized as communally owned. Securing community land rights represents a cost effective and often overlooked strategy for climate action. In Peru, Oxfam has supported communities in the Amazon forests to get control over their land and push back against deforestation.

With your support, Oxfam is working to shift government policies, to convince companies to reduce emissions, and to invest in climate solutions in vulnerable communities. Extreme weather and other effects of the climate crisis hit the vulnerable first and worst, but climate change will impact us all - so we're fighting the climate crisis from all angles, abroad and at home.

Today, September 20th, people across the country are walking out of their homes and workplaces to join the youth-led Climate Strikes around the globe and are demanding that leaders respond to the climate crisis. Oxfam stands in solidarity with youth climate advocates and will be directing our resources, knowledge, and platform to support their calls and complement their activism. Friend, thank you for helping us rise up, demand climate action, and fight for our rights together.

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Want to support the kind of work that tackles the root causes of poverty, hunger, and injustice – and changes lives in more than 90 countries? Our work is only possible because of the support of people like you. Make a donation today.