Urgent aid needed to fight 'super' El Nino: Oxfam

SYDNEY - Droughts, erratic rains and frosts brought by a super-charged El Nino are severely impacting the Pacific, with Papua New Guinea worst hit, aid group Oxfam said in a report Monday.

Calling for an urgent up-scaling in relief to save lives, the charity said 4.7 million people faced hunger, poverty and disease in the Pacific region as a result of the weather pattern.

"This is a crisis on a huge global scale," the report, "Early Action on Super-charged El Nino Vital to Save Lives", said.

"The current El Nino is one of the strongest ever measured, which means there will be more extreme weather conditions that will threaten people's food security, lives and livelihoods."

El Nino is the name given to a weather pattern associated with a sustained period of warming in the central and eastern tropical Pacific which can spark deadly and costly climate extremes.

Last month, the UN weather agency warned the phenomenon, triggered by a warming in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, was the worst in more than 15 years.

Oxfam said climate change was super-charging the effects of El Nino and despite a landmark global climate pact reached in Paris on the weekend, much needed to be done rapidly to cut emissions.

It said the result of the current strong El Nino would likely be 40–50 million people globally facing hunger, disease and water shortages in early 2016 as the slow onset crisis plays out.

The worst-affected places include Papua New Guinea in the Asia-Pacific as well as Ethiopia and Malawi in Africa and Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras in Latin America.

"Papua New Guinea has been severely affected, particularly in the Highlands, with widespread drought and frost affecting up to three million people and destroying crops and livestock," it said.

"Drought has also affected Vanuatu, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Samoa and Tonga, damaging crops and water supplies."

Because El Nino also increases the probability of a longer tropical cyclone season in the southern hemisphere, countries in the eastern Pacific such as the Cook Islands and Samoa may also be at risk of strong storms, it said.

Across Asia monsoon rains have been limited, with Indonesia worst affected, while the forecast for the Philippines is also poor, with 85 percent of the country expected to be in drought by March 2016, it added.

Oxfam said in Ethiopia some 8.2 million people currently needed support due to a lack of rainfall while huge areas of southern Africa were also in drought.

In Central America and Haiti, small farmers and day labourers are the worst affected, with the potential for greater drought and major flooding in South America.

"The warning bells are deafening. We must act now to save lives and prevent people falling further into poverty," said Oxfam Australia's humanitarian manager Meg Quartermaine.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Tasked with saving humanity, climate envoys can't stay awake

LE BOURGET, France - They have been tasked with saving humanity but, as UN climate talks went into much-feared overtime on Friday, many exhausted envoys could barely stay awake.

Thousands of negotiators have spent nearly a fortnight at a sprawling conference venue on the outskirts of the French capital trying to forge the world's first effective universal accord to curb global warming.

With the Friday deadline come and gone and the 195 nations still deeply divided, a third consecutive night of non-stop talks was scheduled -- turning the event into a test of physical endurance as much as diplomacy.

Their sustenance: caffeine, adrenaline, hope... and more caffeine.

"Coffee always helps. This is the only time when I drink coffee," said South African Maesela Kekana, a veteran negotiator to the annual United Nations climate talks, which are notorious for running into overtime.

"You can't survive without coffee. And we help each other. We bring each other coffee."

Guyanese Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman said on Friday afternoon he had just six hours' sleep over the previous two nights, but was not feeling too weary.

"There is a bit of adrenaline and a lot of coffee," Trotman told AFP, adding that the most powerful source of energy was feeling he may be part of making history if an accord is reached on Saturday.

"Hope and expectation are what drives you. And you draw strength from just seeing the delegates from other countries (feeling the same)."

Still, Trotman admitted he had seen some other delegates "nod off" in meetings.

Other negotiators could be seen lying on couches in the public areas of the halls with shoes off, eye-masks on, grabbing a precious hour or two of rest.

- Foggy minds -

Espen Ronneberg, 49, a negotiator for the Pacific island nation of Samoa and a veteran of 17 editions of the UN talks, said fatigue was having an impact on people's ability to think clearly.

"We're all tired and we've become much less diplomatic," Ronneberg said as he looked around the airport hangar-style halls housing the national delegation offices through eyes nearly closed with fatigue.

"Instead, we just go straight to the point. Some people don't even say: 'Hello' anymore, they just nod their heads."

Naomi Klein, a famous Canadian journalist and activist with observer status at the talks, said the endless negotiations favoured the most powerful nations with the biggest delegations that could share the workload.

"We can see the negotiators are not sleeping a lot. Really, their judgement is not that great. And small countries that have small delegations sleep even less, because they have less staff," she said.

Ronneberg said Samoa tried to rotate its forces to keep them fresh.

"We've been trying to send people home," he said, referring to hotels.

"But that's not working, because it takes around one hour for them to get there. So people are just basically sleeping in the offices."

Still, Djordjije Vulikic, part of a relatively small delegation with Montenegro, insisted the fatigue was not impacting his work.

"There is this suspense, you never know what will happen at the end. So you don't feel it now," Vulikic said -- although he added he had been dreaming about what he would do when an agreement was signed.

"I will spend an entire two days sleeping."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com