As a writer, I’m the biggest word fan there is–but I also appreciate the power of photography as a means for making an instant emotional connection. Beginning with the stunning Rankin photos from the Democractic Republic of the Congo that we highlighted in the January 2009 issue of our magazine, OXFAMExchange, it seemed like photography really came to the forefront this year, especially as a way to tell stories about the people behind our work. On that note, here are a few (very subjective) picks for my favorite Oxfam images from the year.

Loko Dadacha photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

Many unforgettable images come to mind when I think of my trip to Ethiopia earlier this year, but I especially like this portrait of Loko Dadacha, one of the most extraordinary people I met during my visit. You can really sense the great strength–physical and emotional–of this widow and mother of six from Gutu Dobi, Ethiopia, who is helping to lead her community during a time of ongoing drought.

Saving circle, Mali. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell / Oxfam America

Women from the Banakoro, Mali, village Saving for Change group–dubbed Sabougnuma, or “good deed”–hold their weekly meeting. I like how this colorful photo really captures the community spirit of the savings groups, where women work together to help each other save money and start small businesses.

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Emily Gertz is a freelance journalist, editor, and blogger covering the environment, technology, science, and sustainability. She reported on the Copenhagen climate talks on behalf of Oxfam America.

Over the past 18 years of international climate talks, the United Nations process has become hidden behind a wall of impenetrable jargon, as well as the often bewildering behavior of professional diplomats.

This is why the “Adopt-a-Negotiator” program sponsored 13 “trackers” over the past year from as many countries — including Brazil, Canada, China, India, and the United States — to follow the key national delegations, and then report back about their positions and actions during climate treaty meetings.

President Obama and Ben discuss the menu of options before negotiators at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Photo courtesy the Adopt-a-Negotiator program.

“We try to serve as a portal, to convey what our negotiators are doing in the talks to concerned citizenry back home,” US tracker Ben Jervey told me.

I caught up with Ben, a 30-year-old environmental writer and editor from Brooklyn, NY, for a brief interview about how and why he tracks the U.S. delegation. We talked on December 18, during what turned out to be the ultimate evening of the Copenhagen talks.

(Full disclosure: Ben and I both write for New York-based OnEarth Magazine. Ben was working on the night of this interview out of the Fresh Air Centre in central Copenhagen, a non-profit media center that sponsored me for my U.N. press credential. [[Thank you.]] And several years ago I was editor to Ben’s contributor for the now-defunct blog Worldchanging NYC. )

Emily Gertz: What, exactly, do the negotiator trackers do?

Ben Jervey: Our job is to really follow these talks, from the June talks in Bonn, through Bangkok, Barcelona, and now here in Copenhagen.

We attend the meetings, we get to know our negotiators. We help communicate back to the civil society base at home [on] where our countries respective positions stand. Read the rest of this entry »

With news breaking that a climate deal has been reached in Copenhagen, Oxfam America released the following statement:

The framework unveiled in Copenhagen today pulled us back from the brink, said international organization Oxfam America.

David Waskow, climate change program director for Oxfam America, said:

“This political agreement must be the floor and not the ceiling. We must now urgently get back to the table and finally make the hard decisions needed to deliver a fair, ambitious and binding climate deal.”

“Millions of people in the US and around the world have mobilized for climate action. Their hopes must drive this process.”

“The US and other countries made progress by saying that financing for developing countries to weather climate impacts and adopt low-carbon development should be $100 billion a year. But it is still unclear how this money will be generated and delivered to the most vulnerable people.”

Emily Gertz is a freelance journalist, editor, and blogger covering the environment, technology, science, and sustainability. She reported on the Copenhagen climate talks on behalf of Oxfam America.

People are looking weary around the conference center at 9:00 pm, but the mood feels pretty even. I think the reason is that if the heads of state are still confabbing, which they are, it means that the 2009 climate talks have yet to crash and burn completely.

In the main hall, I caught sight of youth activist Christina Ora, from the Solomon Islands, being interviewed for TV.  My very first report here from Copenhagen, the weekend before the climate talks began, covered my conversation with Ora at Council of Youth.

Ora is still energetic and articulate two weeks later, despite knowing that the deal likely to emerge here won’t meet the key demand of small island nations.  The small island countries want the industrialized nations to hold mean global temperature growth below 1.5 degrees Centigrade by 2010, a level more likely to stave off catastrophic sea level rise, instead of the 2 degrees C target that they’ve established over the course of this year.

It’s not clear that this number will make it into the final draft of the “Copenhagen accord.”

Ora described to me what she’s been doing at the climate talks, how she feels now, and what she plans to do next.  She’s not giving up on attaining climate justice: the preservation of her home, and help with adapting to the inescapable impacts of global warming.

Ora has a message for “the top people with the power,” the negotiators, ambassadors, and heads of state carving out a new climate treaty:

“If you happen to be reading or hearing this, we wish for you to listen to the voice of Pacific Islanders,  to listen to the vulnerable countries. Because in your hands, you hold our future, our life.”

About President Obama, still present in the building at this writing, Ora said that if he happened to walk by, she’d try to get him to stop and sit with her for a cup of coffee.  I’m sure that even with the rock star president, teenage Ora would bring her impressively well-spoken self to bear and give Obama something to think about during the remainder of these negotiations.

Photo: Ainhoa Goma/Oxfam International

Last night the Oxfam “big heads” (last seen playing football at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh) arrived on the scene in Copenhagen to remind world leaders of the importance of negotiating a fair, ambitious, and binding global deal.

Check out the photo slideshow below:

From Heather Coleman, senior policy advisor at Oxfam America.

We at Oxfam have joined the world in waiting for an agreed upon outcome to be announced today in Copenhagen. It’s possible that negotiators will need to stay through the weekend to hammer out the details based on what heads of state agree upon today.

Today’s meetings between heads of state are unprecedented. Few of us can remember a time when world leaders were called in to the negotiating table without a deal already having been struck. In fact, the Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva voiced his frustration in being called in to negotiating sessions that ended past 2:00 am last night and noted that it reminded him of his early years as a trade union negotiator. It’s not all that often that heads of state get pulled into such mayhem.

Much of the focus continues to be on the US and China as President Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao work through some of the remaining issues regarding emissions reduction commitments, the transparency of reporting, and finance.

The positive sign is that so many world leaders (more than 110) have come together in Copenhagen to tackle the issue of climate change. Regardless of the agreed upon outcome in Copenhagen, there’s global momentum at the highest levels to help propel us towards a fair, ambitious, and binding outcome. 

Constance Okollet, from Uganda, and Sharon Hanshaw, from the US, bonded this week at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Photo by Emily Gertz.

Emily Gertz is a freelance journalist, editor, and blogger covering the environment, technology, science, and sustainability. She reported on the Copenhagen climate talks on behalf of Oxfam America.

When Sharon Hanshaw walks into the lobby of the Hotel Copenhagen, Constance Okollet’s face breaks into an enormous smile. In a minute she is standing up from the sofa to fold Hanshaw into an enormous hug.

Soon they are sitting on the couch with their heads together, Okollet’s wiry black hair touching Hanshaw’s bright blond bangs. They trade news of their families and homes, and then move on to strategizing about how Okollet might do fundraising for the community organizing group she founded, the Osukura United Women Network.

Okollet is a farmer from the rural Tororo district in eastern Uganda. Hanshaw is a cosmetologist from East Biloxi, Mississippi. The two women have become close friends while traveling long distances to bear witness to the devastating impacts of climate change on their communities.

While talking on the couch, Okollet gets a call on her mobile from her husband, back home in Uganda. She passes the phone to Hanshaw, who jokes with him like she’s known the couple forever. In her Mississippi drawl, she offers to send him a package of her signature confection, homemade pralines.

Watching them laugh and joke together with so much fun and affection, it’s surprising to learn that the two women met only a few months ago, in New York City. They came in September 2009 for the United Nations Climate Summit, to make the case for funding to help poor nations adapt to climate change. Hanshaw is the first “climate witness” in this program who is from a rich, industrialized nation.

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From Heather Coleman, senior policy adviser at Oxfam America.

Earlier today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Copenhagen and announced in a speech that the US is willing to commit to a collective fund of $100 billion per year by 2020 to support efforts to help poor countries build up their resilience and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Oxfam is making an ice wall sculpture (featuring Pres. Obama's face) to deliver a message to the administration. Photo by Rully Prayoga/Oxfam International.

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Check out the latest pics (gathered by our blogger-on-the-ground Emily Gertz) of the melting Kenyan herders at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Oxfam commissioned the three-meter high sculptures — of a Maasai man and  woman holding a baby — to highlight the human cost of climate change.

The woman with a baby once had distinct facial features. Photo by Ainhoa Goma/Oxfam International.

Her face has since melted away. Photo by Emily Gertz.

What once were detailed depictions are now shapeless blocks of ice. As they wane away, the sculptures  serve as a powerful reminder to negotiators — who must  move fast during the remainder of this week if they want to help poor communities survive climate change.

Those details are barely visible now. Photo by Emily Gertz.

The warrior once had a detailed staff and necklace. Photo by Ainhoa Goma/Oxfam International

Emily Gertz is a freelance journalist, editor, and blogger covering the environment, technology, science, and sustainability. She reported on the Copenhagen climate talks on behalf of Oxfam America.

Today Oxfam and tcktcktck held a climate hearing at the Copenhagen climate treaty talks, featuring the testimonies of four of the witnesses who described experiencing devastating impacts from fast-changing weather and environmental conditions in their home regions: Constance Okollet of Uganda, Shorbanu Khatun of Bangladesh, Cayetano Huanca of Peru, and Pelenise Alofa of Tuvalu and Kirabati.

Human rights advocate and former Irish president Mary Robinson, Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Oxfam International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs also spoke.  I’ve included a section of Tutu’s speech in the slide show, above.

Tutu called on the world to listen to the voices of the climate witnesses.  He lauded the audience for doing so much to bring about action on global warming (leading to some uncomfortable squirming here and there at the perhaps-unearned praise, it seemed to me).

Tutu also spoke of maintaining hope despite the bleak outlook for the talks thus far, saying that it was remarkable how many people had spoken up worldwide to get action on global warming, as well as financial assistance for those already feeling its impacts.  Tutu noted that many of the hundreds of thousands who marched around the world last Saturday had yet to experience such changes themselves.  There was remarkable goodness in them, he said.

“ I have been told to communicate approval for you from celestial corners,” he said, earning chuckles from the packed room.  ”You are putting a smile on God’s face, a face that is often contorted by tears.”

Each witness spoke with a passion that seemed to affect everyone in the room, about the losses they have faced from unprecedented storms, droughts, illnesses, crop and livestock failures, loss of fresh water, as well as the stresses these conditions have brought to their communities.

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