“Come into the sun, everyone. Stand in the sun with me,” Velazquez said, swooping his arms together the direction of the field in front of him.
Grudgingly, some of the hundreds of marchers who had gathered in Winston-Salem in support of farmworkers, eased out of the shadows into the field.
“This is what farmworkers are dealing with right now, right here in North Carolina,” said Velazquez, President and Founder of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) referring to the heat, which at 88 degrees was 16 degrees above average for the day. “(The) workers are stooped over in the fields making the life of leisure for the people in (RJ Reynolds’) executive offices. It’s not only an injustice, it’s a moral disgrace.”
The endlessly energetic Velazquez, and hundreds of farmworker and FLOC supporters, were in Winston-Salem for RJ Reynolds’ annual shareholders’ meeting to introduce a shareholders’ resolution that would require the company to adopt a strict human rights policy. In addition to the resolution, FLOC is seeking a formal meeting with RJ Reynolds CEO Susan Ivey to discuss ways to improve the working conditions in tobacco fields.
Despite having little chance of being adopted, the shareholders’ resolution is an opportunity to bring the issue of farmworker justice directly to RJ Reynolds officials. This year, Oxfam America Campaign and Advocacy Advisor Irit Tamir asked Ivey and others to support a stronger human rights policy. Oxfam and its allies believe that the weak human rights policy adopted by RJ Reynolds’ in February does little to ensure that the workers who pick the company’s tobacco – merely encouraging the company’s contractors to improve tobacco picker conditions, not demanding it.
And those conditions are brutal. Tobacco workers face some of the toughest conditions in the industry, including racism, long hours of stooped labor, exposure to dangerous chemicals and annual incomes of less than $8,000. Though RJ Reynolds claims an ‘independent’ survey of tobacco workers by a company it hired reveals that tobacco pickers are satisfied with their working conditions, it’s doubtful the workers at the May 7 rally would agree.
In its effort to rectify these conditions, FLOC has repeatedly sought a meeting with Ivey, only to have those overtures ignored. FLOC is also making its case publicly at shareholder meetings and through the media.
RJ Reynolds adopted its existing human rights policy partly in response to that work. While simultaneously distancing itself from the workers who pick its tobacco, claiming that because they work for a Reynolds contractor, they aren’t Reynolds employees. While technically true, FLOC and Oxfam believe that Reynolds has the responsibility and the power to demand higher standards from its contractors, and only purchase tobacco from contractors that ensure safe and healthy working conditions for its workers.
Though the shareholders’ resolution was defeated, the FLOC campaign against RJ Reynolds still maintains its goal of meeting with Ivey, and the ultimate adoption of a human rights policy that truly enforces human rights.
What you can do:
Sharon Hanshaw, executive director of the Oxfam America partner organization Coastal Women for Change (CWC), has been working to help Biloxi residents prepare for hurricane season. Now, she says, many locals fear that they will no longer be able to earn a living from the Gulf waters—and in a city already battling poverty and the legacy of Hurricane Katrina, this could be one uncertainty too many.
“People are in panic mode,” says Hanshaw. “They’re worrying: ‘I might lose my job, I might lose my job.’ What does that do to you and your family?”
The oil spill threatens a region already hit hard by poverty and unemployment. The Oxfam-funded 2008 report Measure of America ranked Mississippi and other Gulf Coast states as the lowest in the country on educational attainment, life expectancy, and level of income.
Hanshaw estimates that at least 20 percent of people in her native East Biloxi rely on fishing and shrimping to support their families. Many more work in related industries, including restaurants, shipbuilding, and the city’s 11 seafood processing plants. “Fish and shrimp: that’s how we live,” she says.
With the oil spill approaching the Gulf Coast, “fishermen fear this could be the end of their career,” says Hanshaw. “They’re asking questions like, what kind of compensation can I receive? Can I still fish and be okay? How long, if the spill reaches land, will I be out of work?”
Though community members have attended three meetings with BP officials, Hanshaw notes that straight answers are in short supply. “We get emails from the Environmental Protection Agency, BP, local organizations, national organizations—all with different information. There’s not one email with the same stuff,” she says. “There’s a lot of unanswered [questions], uneasiness.”
Cultural and language barriers also add to a sense of exclusion and misinformation. “The Vietnamese-American community is the majority of fishermen here. It’s their livelihood,” says Hanshaw. But, she adds, many Vietnamese fishermen don’t have computers or internet access—and key resources, like the BP insurance claims phone line, don’t provide Vietnamese translators.
“In East Biloxi, the Vietnamese community was left out during the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina,” adds Hanshaw. “Many are afraid it will happen again.”
Memories of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are still fresh in Biloxi, where 52 people died and more than 5,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. With the start of hurricane season approaching on June 1, Hanshaw says many residents are worried about the next big storm.
Many in the low- and middle-income neighborhood of East Biloxi are still fighting what they see as an inequitable recovery process. Right now, Hanshaw’s group is protesting the closing of three local schools, including the historically African-American Nichols Elementary. School superintendent Dr. Paul Tisdale attributed the closings to budget cuts and poor enrollment, but Hanshaw sees post-Katrina displacement as the root of the issue.
“Instead of building back affordable houses as soon as they could, the municipality had developers from other cities build condos and casinos,” explains Hanshaw. As a result, many families were forced to move out of the area, while others displaced by the storm still haven’t returned.
“If they take the schools… the community as we know it is over. It’s gone,” says Hanshaw. “A lot of teachers’ jobs will be gone. And that’s very devastating for people.”
With all of this happening at once, it’s no wonder locals are feeling overwhelmed, she says. “Can you imagine the mental state of people—thinking about schools, BP oil, and hurricane season, all in a couple of weeks?”
This month, CWC is partnering with another local group, Gulf Coast Restoration, to distribute a fact sheet about the oil spill in English and Vietnamese. “The fact sheet will tell you what you really need to know, how to prepare yourself. If you have an [insurance] claim, this is the number that you need,” says Hanshaw.
CWC volunteers plan to hand-distribute the fact sheets to peoples’ homes. “Not everyone has a computer, so [we make] phone calls and knock on doors,” she says. “You have to talk to people face to face, get them on the same page. Don’t assume everybody got the memo.”
Hanshaw is inviting her neighbors to attend a training session on advocacy, where they’ll learn how to make their voices heard both locally and in Washington, DC. Her group will also continue their core work on hurricane preparedness through a series of workshops, where locals learn how to assemble preparedness kits and create evacuation plans.
“Now we have to address the spill too, because that’s a form of preparedness also,” she says. “We want to help people understand that this is big. We have to get ready. And we don’t know what’s going to happen. We just don’t know.”
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The Canadian organization Rights and Democracy has developed an assessment tool that communities can use to answer these questions for themselves. The system is called the “Getting it Right” Human Rights Impact Assessment tool, and is designed so that local organizations and citizens can, with minimal training, carry out their own study of how their basic rights -- such as free speech, water, safe working conditions, shelter, and education -- are affected by the actions of governments and companies establishing mines, agricultural operations, factories, or oil and gas pipelines.
“A lot of companies will do an impact assessment on their operations, using an outside consultant, but these don’t always do much for the stakeholders in the community, or promote accountability,” says Chris Jochnick, director of Oxfam America’s private sector program. “Helping community members conduct their own human rights assessment strengthens their capacity to examine their situation, frame their issues, and engage with a company or government,” he says. “We think this will produce a more robust and balanced assessment than one done by outsiders.”
The Rights and Democracy assessment tool helps people document how their rights are supposed to be protected under national law, and the actual effects of an investment project on these rights. It helps community leaders create a team, plan out the work and specific rights to assess, carry out surveys and community consultations, validate findings, write reports, and meet with companies and governments to urge action to address the problems uncovered in the assessment.
Rights and Democracy commissioned five assessments to test the system starting in 2005. One of them looked at the effects of a metal refinery on women’s rights in La Oroya, Peru, concentrating on the rights to water, health, adequate housing, and working conditions. It was done by the Centro de Promoción y Estudios de la Mujer Andina. The organization concluded that lack of enforcement of environmental rules by the state was one of the main contributors to the poor public health situation in the city. The report also cites lack of commitment by the Doe Run Peru SRL company to improve the environmental performance of the plant.
“By looking at the health problems in La Oroya through a woman’s eyes, this assessment helped uncover a pattern of children’s and reproductive health issues that was clearly connected to lead poisoning,” says Gabrielle Watson, Oxfam America’s planning and learning specialist who helped develop the assessment tool with Rights and Development.
Oxfam America is helping two organizations carry out a Human Rights Impact Assessment. One is related to a proposed natural gas operation in Bolivia where the Centro de Estudios Aplicados a los Derechos Economicos, Sociales y Culturales (CEADESC) will carry out the study with local Guaraní indigenous communities that were denied their right to be consulted about the gas exploration activities in their territory. The other case concerns tobacco pickers in the United States, and will be carried out by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). FLOC will look at efforts by migrant and undocumented farmworkers to improve working conditions on tobacco farms.
Watson says the human rights assessments will help people take control of the type of development carried out in their name. “Local people are the experts about human rights impacts of private investment projects in their communities. This tool puts them in the driver’s seat in the search for safer, more equitable outcomes that are good for everyone.”
]]>Keep this guide handy as you read the paper or watch the news. In a glance, it will allow you to become a more active participant in your local, county, state or federal government. Inside, you will find contact information for the elected officials who represent the six counties of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, from the president down to your local city council member. A quick description of the purpose and function of the different branches and levels of government will make it easier to determine the best person to contact when an issue moves you to action. Colorful maps will help you locate your ward or legislative district, and photos of your elected officials will make their faces more familiar.
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Turns out, some things don’t change.
When the muddy waters of the Tar River coursed through eastern North Carolina on Sept. 16, 1999, it was Princeville that bore the brunt of the flooding. All told, the rising waters killed six people; destroyed or damaged 1,183 homes; and, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory, “all but erased the town.”
Sadly, Princeville isn’t an isolated case. Worldwide, the most vulnerable communities are the ones hit hardest by natural hazards like droughts, floods, and storms— threats that are becoming more frequent and severe, owing to climate change.
This summer, Oxfam commissioned Susan L. Cutter and Christopher T. Emrich of the University of South Carolina’s Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute to map social vulnerability in the southeastern US—site of the country’s most persistent poverty. Cutter and Emrich identified counties in 13 states that reveal a high level of vulnerability to floods, hurricane-force winds, sea level rise, drought, or a combination of these hazards.
What makes a community vulnerable? A mix of physical factors and social characteristics, including demographic, economic, and housing conditions. In Miami-Dade County, FL, for example, over 50 percent of the land lies within a flood zone and 100 percent within a hurricane wind hazard zone. So, faced with a major hurricane, people in socially vulnerable neighborhoods in the county—like Miami’s Little Haiti, home to many poor immigrant families—are at greatest risk of property loss, injury, and death. And it is these families that have the fewest resources to respond to or recover from a disaster.
As a next step, the institute will share its Social Vulnerability Index with policy makers, emergency management officials, and community leaders. The institute and Oxfam hope these findings will inform smarter disaster preparation plans for the nation’s most disadvantaged areas.
As for Princeville, in late 1999 town leaders voted against a federal buyout that would require residents to relocate, opting instead to rebuild with stronger buildings. That recovery process continues 10 years later.
“[At first] I said there is no way I’m going back, I was so devastated,” one Princeville resident told The New York Times shortly after the floods. “But then I thought about it, and I said, ‘Why should I give up what my ancestors worked so hard to leave us?’”
At the national level, we need to:
Click here to learn more and see the full set of social vulnerability maps.
]]>But a hungry child exists in a larger context: if we nourish communities, they can nourish their own children.
The woman on our cover, Fatou Doumbia, and other women in her village in Mali, pooled their resources last year. They set aside nearly a ton of millet as a defense against the hunger they’d seen as food prices spiked. Hers is another face of hunger: determined, resourceful.
After the last harvest, Oxfam reached out to supporters to respond to the food crisis. We’ve devoted much of this issue to looking at what communities have done to avoid the kinds of hardships they confronted. When people living in poverty are hit by a food crisis or natural disaster, they lack resources to tide them over.
Oxfam works to help people build their resilience. Let respect and hope fuel your efforts to support women like Doumbia.
]]>Achieving farm resilience requires building up the resilience of vulnerable farmers by developing their skills, expertise and voice while supporting their use of agro-ecological farming practices. Building resilience depends not just on how farmers manage resources, but on how well local, national, and global institutions support farmers. Agro-ecological practices can empower vulnerable small-scale farmers, offering them both greater control over their lives and an accessible means of improving their food security, while decreasing their risk of crop failure or livestock death due to climate shocks. Vulnerable farmers can use agro-ecological practices to build resilient farms and improve their livelihoods, achieving multiple benefits: 1. improved food security; 2. adaptation to a changing climate; and 3. mitigation of climate change.
People-centred resilience consists of five principles which should guide how investments in vulnerable farming communities are designed and implemented. They are:
Following these principles ensures that investments support farmers in their efforts to become food-secure and adapt to climate change. Four institutions central to delivering people-centered resilience are: secure land rights; dynamic farmer associations; responsive agricultural advisory services; and public support for environmental services.
]]>Coston admits that co-leading a group of local volunteers takes time and effort. But it’s worth it, she says, because of the great people she’s met—and the feeling of shaping world events as they happen.
“I believe so strongly in the fact that people en masse can make a change, so why not let it be us?” she says. “That’s what keeps me going every day.”
Meet the Oxfam Action Corps: grassroots activists, based in 13 US cities, who play an increasingly crucial role in Oxfam’s climate change campaign. With climate legislation in Congress and the Copenhagen UN talks fast approaching, these volunteers are calling on leaders to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and help vulnerable communities here and abroad respond to the catastrophic effects of climate change.
I first met New York Oxfam Action Corps co-leader Winnie Lee, a Manhattan-based legal clerk, during the Human Countdown event in Central Park. “It’s amazing that over 1,000 people were willing to give up their Sunday to be here,” says Lee of that day’s turnout. “We proved that there are a lot of people out there who actually care about this issue and want to learn more about it.”
Lee says that many New Yorkers already feel connected to the human side of the climate crisis. “We have lots of immigrant communities here, so people can tie the effects back to Bangladesh or the Dominican Republic, to rising sea levels or hurricanes. They realize it’s their family, or other people they know, who are living in affected communities.”
To get people mobilized, the Oxfam Action Corps taps into the city’s vibrant music scene, organizing benefit concerts and setting up tables at events like the All Points West music festival.
“If a band [supporting Oxfam] plays four shows in a week, we can get 500 signatures for a petition,” says Lee, who first encountered Oxfam at a concert by the band Bell X1. “Or we have people at the tables call or write their member of Congress. That’s democracy in action … empowering people to contact their elected officials, who are supposed to represent them.”
The volunteers also reach out to elected officials in person at legislative meetings. Thanks to their efforts, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand recently signed on as the first US senator to become a Sisters on the Planet ambassador.
Next up? An Oxfam America Hunger Banquet® on the New York University campus, which they hope will bring in 150 to 200 participants.
The day after the Human Countdown, the Austin Oxfam Action Corps organized a “Climate Wake-up Call” on the local University of Texas (UT) campus. For the attention-grabbing stunt—which coincided with similar events worldwide—25 volunteers, students, and residents set their cell phone alarms to go off simultaneously. Amid the din, participants formed the shape of ticking clocks with their arms, symbolizing that time is running out to negotiate a global climate deal at Copenhagen.
“We held the Wake-Up Call in between classes in the middle of campus, so we got a lot of traffic,” explains Coston, who coordinated the event with the UT-Austin Oxfam Club and Oxfam CHANGE Leaders. The high-profile location led to dialogue with students and an article in the daily campus paper.
Meanwhile, the Oxfam Action Corps is working with environmental groups to organize a climate change rally in Austin later this month, where over 200 people will walk a half-mile from the UT-Austin campus to the state capitol building.
“We definitely want our negotiators [at Copenhagen] and President Obama to know that there are a lot of people in Texas supporting a global deal. It’s important for them to know that people in our state have gathered together for this purpose,” says Coston.
She adds that in an eco-conscious community like Austin, people respond to Oxfam’s message about the human cost of the crisis.
“We’re trying to help people adapt to climate change: something that is really necessary. We’re getting [poor communities] the resources they need,” she says. “People grasp that fact—instead of going in after a disaster and spending millions of dollars, you can go in before.”
]]>Historically, studies about climate hazards and social vulnerability have been conducted in separate silos. The Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) is the first study of its kind to examine both the potential impact of natural hazards and which populations are most likely to be negatively affected. The SoVI statistically examines the underlying social and demographic characteristics of the population and how they impact certain segments of the population in disabling ways when it comes to climate change-related hazards.
This research, commissioned by Oxfam America, includes a series of layered maps that depict social and climate change-related hazard vulnerability. The maps assist in identifying hotspots in the US Southeast, which are at significant risk in the face of four particular climate change-related hazards: drought, flooding, hurricane force winds, and sea-level rise.
The specific region of focus is the 13-state region of the US Southeast: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Roughly 80 percent of all US counties that experience persistent poverty (defined as a county in which at least 20 percent of the population experiences poverty for three decades or more) lie in this region.
For more details and to view interactive maps, visit oxfamamerica.org/adapt.
]]>"Climate change will impact everyone, but not everyone will be impacted equally," said Oxfam America President Raymond C. Offenheiser. "Social factors like income and race do not determine who will be hit by a natural disaster, but they do determine a population’s ability to prepare, respond, and recover when disaster does strike. This report will serve as a critical tool to help us identify especially vulnerable communities and invest wisely in their climate resiliency and preparedness."
The study covers 13 states in the US southeast from Arkansas to Virginia, measuring the underlying social and demographic characteristics of populations and how some of those characteristics negatively affect their ability to cope with climate change-related hazards, such as flooding, drought,hurricane force winds and sea-level rise. Poverty is deepest in the rural South where more than one in four people live in counties with persistent poverty, and it is therefore one of the country’s most socially vulnerable regions to climate change.
"We have already seen that climate-related disasters hit some populations worse than others," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP. "From drought in western Alabama to hurricanes in Louisiana, this research is instrumental in helping to identify those areas that are most vulnerable, so that we can better prepare and help before disaster hits."
The study was conducted using the Social Vulnerability Index and overlaying it with data of climate change-related hazards. The tool was developed by Dr. Susan Cutter and Dr. Christopher Emrich at the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina.
"While the USGS was not involved in the Oxfam report, our recent work revealed very similar findings about vulnerability hotspots in the Southeast," said US Geological Survey scientist Virginia Burkett. "It is vitally important that we understand vulnerabilities at a regional and local scale so that they can be incorporated into future risk assessments and adaptation planning. Our decisions today will determine the severity of climate change impacts in the future."
"Climate change is happening and it’s affecting the poor—socially and economically vulnerable communities—first. As climate change increases and intensifies floods, storms, and heat waves, many of the world’s poorest communities, from Biloxi to Bangladesh, will experience unprecedented stress," said Offenheiser. "Congress must act now to address climate change and invest in the resiliency of poor communities on the frontlines of climate change at home and abroad."
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