Oxfam is warn­ing against divert­ing funds away from poverty fight­ing to pay for cli­mate change funding.

A new report from Oxfam esti­mates that 4.5 mil­lion chil­dren could die if funds are raided from poverty fight­ing mea­sures, and are used instead for global warm­ing. Oxfam is call­ing for the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to raise another $50 bil­lion dol­lars a year for envi­ron­ment measures.

From this Press Asso­ci­a­tion arti­cle that we found at The Guardian, we read more of Oxfam’s warn­ing against aid “raiding”.

And it says the money must be pro­vided in addi­tion to the 0.7% of GDP devel­oped nations have pledged as aid to improve the lives of peo­ple in some of the world’s poor­est coun­tries – or efforts to tackle poverty will stall.

A report by Oxfam warns that divert­ing $50bn from exist­ing aid pledges to fund cli­mate mea­sures would lead to the death of 4.5 mil­lion chil­dren, while 75 mil­lion fewer young­sters would be likely to go to school and 8.6 mil­lion fewer peo­ple would have access to HIV/Aids treatment.

It could prove a major set­back to efforts to meet the Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals which aim to end hunger and poverty and boost edu­ca­tion, health, gen­der equal­ity and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity by 2015, the report warns.

Oxfam said it was already see­ing peo­ple going with­out food, pulling their chil­dren out of school or sell­ing live­stock to pay for debts caused by fail­ing crops and other climate-related problems.

Accord­ing to the aid agency, just three coun­tries includ­ing the UK are in favour of addi­tional fund­ing for cli­mate mea­sures – and the issue could prove to be a deal breaker in the upcom­ing crunch talks aimed at agree­ing global emis­sions cuts in Copen­hagen in December.

A fail­ure by devel­oped coun­tries to address the prob­lems sur­round­ing adap­ta­tion fund­ing has led to dis­trust between the two sides and could under­mine efforts to secure a deal to cut emissions.

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