by Dr. Helene Gayle, CARE president and CEO

Climate change has the potential to wipe out the last 25 years of development gains in some parts of the world. As the number of natural disasters has doubled within the last 20 years, the world's poorest people are already experiencing the effects of climate change. More than 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day, and 70 percent of these people are girls and women.

Climate change acts as a multiplier of existing threats to food security, education, health, natural resources and the day-to-day struggle for survival. Greenhouse gas emissions create more extreme weather patterns, shift seasons and change the amount of rainfall and average temperatures, causing crops to fail and water supplies to dry up or run over.

CARE has worked on climate change for decades and is helping lead the charge with one of the largest adaptation programs in the world. We have a three part approach:

1. Reduce poverty and help communities adapt

Our adaptation programs help communities withstand drought and floods through simple, cost-effective activities like harvesting rainwater, planting dense mangroves to protect crops from storm waves and using more resistant seeds in their fields. For example, seasonal floods are becoming worse in Bangladesh. CARE helps the women most affected by climate change adapt – sometimes making a change as basic as raising ducks instead of chickens, so their food supply can swim instead of sink the next time there's a flood.

Early warning systems and community-based disaster response plans are also critical adaptation strategies. For every dollar we invest in disaster risk reduction and preparedness roughly seven dollars are saved in disaster response.

2. Protect the environment, conserve and reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Plowing fields and "slash and burn" agriculture releases carbon in to the atmosphere. Pesticide and fertilizer use releases nitrous oxide – 200 to 300 times more effective in trapping heat than carbon dioxide. CARE promotes climate-friendly agriculture – minimum tillage, building barriers to prevent hillside erosion and planting nitrogen-rich trees on farming plots – to help conserve land and reduce greenhouse emissions.

Deforestation is responsible for 20-30 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Reforestation preserves existing biodiversity, takes away carbon from the atmosphere and, after 30 years, builds a natural repository for greenhouse gases. CARE and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) alliance currently has pilot projects in Mozambique and Tanzania to help protect the coastal marine and forest area's unique biodiversity while developing more diverse, sustainable and profitable agriculture and fisheries for communities dependent on natural resources. Our Mi Bosque project in Guatemala helps communities to grow forests and manage natural resources. Within the last two years alone, Mi Bosque worked with more than 2,000 community members to reforest 239,833 hectares across 132 communities. The average plot of land in the project area has experienced a 150 percent increase in productivity.

3. Seek a global solution through policy change

Policy choices will determine whether we can make poverty history despite climate change, or if climate change will make poverty even more pervasive than it is today. CARE is engaged with over a dozen global climate change alliances, including the 500 NGO-member strong Climate Action Network. Together with our partners, we are working to mobilize public and the U.S. government support to:

• Reduce emissions to keep global temperatures as far below a 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit increase as possible (right now, the global average temperature has risen almost 0.8 degrees Celsuis or 1.44 degrees Fahrenheit); and
• Ensure adaptation funding reaches and responds to the priorities of women and highly vulnerable populations.

Unless action is taken now to help the most vulnerable people adapt to climate change impacts, it will not be possible to ensure the food security of a growing (and migrating) world population.

We must – and can – do more.

Here's what you can do to help:

• Donate to help poor communities get the information and tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty and adapt to our changing climate;
• Learn more about the CARE/WWF Alliance;
• Join CARE at our National Conference in Washington, D.C., on May 11-12 to advocate for pro-poor climate change policies.

Thank you!

We’ve seen the images, heard the statistics and given what monetary donations we can. We’ve spent nights on our knees praying, days filled with thoughts, and minutes counting our blessings.

The much awaited COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark is finally here and from today, Monday 7^th December till Friday 18^th December, the world will witness with full stare the commitment of our leaders…better still If I may borrow the words of Connie Hedegaard, whether our leaders are ready to “move the world from an era of talk to an era of change”.

Since the inter-sessional climate talks in Bangkok, I have seen increased interest by Africa and for that matter my country Ghana, in the governance of climate change. Ghana government and other NGOs in Ghana such as Friends of the Earth, Civic Response and SEND Ghana have expressed the need to pressure the developed countries to take on emission reduction commitments that are required to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change that threatens the survival of humans as a species.

Over the past couple of months, my government has undertaken what one may call necessary baby steps in the governance of climate change especially in the vein of having a participatory climate change governance system in-country. The genesis of this participatory process has involved information sharing on the issues of climate change and subsequent discussions to pick up from the Ghanaian citizenry their ideas on addressing climate change. Workshops and seminars have been held for variant citizenry groups such as NGOs, traditional authorities and media. The culmination of all these workshops was a national forum held on 2^nd December that informed citizens the position that Ghana was taking to COP 15. Among other things, the main highlight from the national forum was that Ghana along with the other countries of the African Group was going to COP 15 to ask for the developed countries to take on emission reductions of at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Coming from a country that is experiencing impacts of climate change and may experience worse, I am hoping that developing countries can actually make the Annex 1 countries especially USA to feel the heat for the need to take action. It is a welcome thought that Presidents and Prime ministers of certain countries will be present at the COP 15 but let us hope that they do more good than harm; it is either they are instrumental in helping come out with a good legally binding deal or by their presence, rather draw attention to themselves and let focus be lost in the negotiations and thus they delay the process.

We all know how great an orator President Barack Obama is, and I for one am worried that USA may be playing the “Obama-mania” card with his Excellency’s presence at the COP. Serious negotiations under COP 15 may become arrested due to the presence of “Pollywood celebrities” such as his Excellency President Obama. For those of us from developing countries, the possibility of this stunt spells double doom as a USA is not prepared to take on serious commitments and may by this act delay what the negotiations could achieve.

I am not familiar with the USA system of governance but it is interesting to note that when it comes to Climate change negotiations, the President declares his inability to contribute anything concrete until a bill is passed through the senate; however, when about 30,000 soldiers had to be sent to Afghanistan, there was no waiting for the senate to decide, the President just announced it…this leaves me to wonder, how devastating does USA want Climate change and its impacts to become before they get serious?

As a working partner of the CARE “Southern Voices Project”, I am by this asking the developing country delegates and negotiators to pressure the developed countries to take on deep emission reduction commitments and also asking the Annex 1 countries especially USA to “STEP IT UP”…if greenhouse gas emissions continue, it is not Mother Earth who will die but rather the human race who will as Mother Earth adjusts other components in her system in accordance with the GHG concentration in the atmosphere to ensure a balance.

We owe it to the generation yet unborn to save our climate …we can, so we must!!!

We are parents who hold our children on our lap while listening to conference calls about the latest developments in fighting poverty. We are individuals who hold corporate jobs and sneak to an empty cubicle to call our politicians on pending humanitarian issues being voted on in Congress that day. We are students, who arrange to be absent from class for 2 days so we can travel to DC on our own dime to attend the CARE National Conference and lobby with our officials about hunger and gender-based violence. We are retirees that use our free time to meet with Senators in our home district to make sure they know that their constituents want action for the mother in India, Africa and Asia who has to choose which child to feed that night.

Yesterday, Congress passed H.R. 2410, a bill that includes authorization for an Office for Global Women's Issues. The Prevention of Child Marriage provisions, also provisions for Food Security are included in that bill. These are the issues which CARE advocates took to Washington, DC last month.

Yesterday, I felt a personal connected to this legislation. It could be because I’m a CARE advocate or maybe because I'm a woman, but I think it is because I am human.

Thank you fellow volunteer CARE advocates for leading these double lives. The joy of yesterday happened in part – because of you.

There's so much to say about the importance of advocating for women and girls around the world who don't have the power to speak up for themselves.  There's so much to be said for hundreds of people who, despite a rampant economic crisis, set aside time and money to travel and stand up on behalf of those girls and their communities. But what you don't expect from attending this conference is the impact it will have on you, as an advocate.

For us advocates, one of the biggest pleasures of working with CARE is being able to learn about the work being done on the ground around the world. The "Voices from the Field" session moderated by CARE COO Steve Hollingworth brought together members of CARE's teams from Peru, Kenya, Bangladesh and the Caribbean for a lively discussion about what is and what is not working in CARE's country programs.

At the CARE National Conference in Washington, DC, many important workshops have been set up for participants to learn how to become better advocates for the world’s poorest people.

When I told my friends this weekend that I was taking 2 days off work to fly to DC this week for the CARE National Conference, they were kind of shocked.  Well, not completely shocked; the theme of this event is totally something I would want to be a part of, but I had been complaining lately that I had so much material to cover with my high school students before the end of the year.

I just sat through an info-session on the need to update US Foreign Assistance at the CARE National Convention.  The speakers from Oxfam, Women Thrive Worldwide, and the Center for Global Development were energetic, informative and quite intriguing.

Care National Conference kicked off this morning with a call to action. Susan Crown, board member, welcomed over 600 participants, the largest group ever assembled, representing 40 states and 250 congressional districts.

These extraordinary times and the state of the financial crisis brings into focus just how interconnected our world really is.  Helene Gayle noted that people have a tendency to focus inward during these times of crisis, but our assembly in the nation’s capital emphasizes the important of global poverty during these times.

Tomorrow the while we are connecting with our Congressional Leaders on Capital hill, hundreds of thousands of others will be connecting with their congressional leaders via phone call and email.  Our many voices coming together in one movement to elevate global poverty on the US Agenda, the electricity and enthusiasm here is infectious.  

Cheryl