[A Western
diplomat who was at the talks said that it was an exaggeration to characterize
the break in negotiations on Wednesday morning — which took place after 4 a.m.,
when delegates were exhausted from a long day — as “a walkout.” While the talks
did end in discord, the diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity,
everyone agreed to leave together with expectations that talks would resume
later.]
By David Jolly
 |
Pawel Supernak/European Pressphoto Agency
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, at climate talks in
Rich and poor countries are at odds over damages for disaster losses.
|
The new catchphrase is “loss and damage,” shorthand for the
fight over financing for the costs of rising seas, powerful storms and
persistent drought. And the issue of whether the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change should be modified to require rich nations to bear
the cost of disasters exacerbated by global warming is threatening to torpedo
the Warsaw talks, which are meant to prepare a global climate agreement
to be signed in 2015.
“Talk to someone who’s just lost their livelihood two times
in the last five years, lost their cow” for reasons related to climate change,
said Harjeet Singh, the international coordinator for the advocacy group
ActionAid. “There has to be a system in place to help that poor woman.”
In the early hours of Wednesday, Mr. Singh said, the
refusal of developed nations to consider seriously the creation of a new
mechanism prompted a group of developing countries known as the Group of 77 and
China to walk out of the talks, sending “a very strong message
that they can’t go home from Warsaw without a loss-and-damage mechanism.”
Developed nations fear footing the bill for potentially
unlimited future liability, and agreed only reluctantly to add loss and damage
to the Warsaw agenda at the end of last year’s climate conference in Doha , Qatar
The issue was given new momentum in recent days by the
typhoon that battered the Philippines , though it could be years before scientists are able to
conclude whether the giant storm’s extreme force can be traced to global
warming.
“This is the issue that almost crashed the Doha talks,” said Alden Meyer, the director of policy at the Union of
Concerned Scientists. “And here we are going into the last days of Warsaw , and the small island states and the less-developed
countries are seeing signs that they’re not going to come out of this with what
was agreed last year.”
A Western diplomat who was at the talks said that it was an
exaggeration to characterize the break in negotiations on Wednesday morning —
which took place after 4 a.m., when delegates were exhausted from a long day —
as “a walkout.” While the talks did end in discord, the diplomat said, speaking
on the condition of anonymity, everyone agreed to leave together with expectations
that talks would resume later.
They did pick up later, and Todd D. Stern, the United States climate delegate, expressed confidence during a news
conference that the conflict would not cause the discussions to fail.
“I don’t see this negotiation blowing up,” Mr. Stern said.
“I think we will find a resolution.”
Mr. Stern noted that the United States and many other developed countries supported the idea of
including loss and damage “broadly under the pillar of adaptation”; that is,
under one of the existing categories for aid under the framework treaty.
Negotiators from developing countries are calling for a new
mechanism to be established, because they lack the resources to respond to
disasters that scientists predict will become more severe and more frequent as
the atmosphere heats up.
Saleemul Huq, a climate policy fellow at the International
Institute for Environment and Development in London , which supports projects on climate change and energy for
poor countries, said the process, already troubled by disputes over emissions
reductions, could break down without a deal for new financing.
“Unless a loss-and-damage mechanism is actually agreed,” he
said, “we don’t see how the negotiations can continue.”
CONDOM CONTEST PRODUCES 812 IDEAS FOR IMPROVEMENT
[At least two winners will work with polyurethane, including Richard Chartoff, a University of Oregon
By Pam
Belluck
Those ideas are among the winners announced Wednesday by
the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation of
a contest to
create a condom that
men would actually use. The contest, the foundation said, aimed to decrease
unintended pregnancies and sexually
transmitted diseases with
“a next-generation condom that significantly preserves or enhances pleasure.”
The foundation received 812 applications, chose 11 and
awarded the winners $100,000 each. They could receive up to $1 million after
they develop the ideas. Steven Buchsbaum, a Gates Foundation official, said
winners ranged from a longtime condom manufacturer in India to American chemical engineers to British design
consultants whose previous work included vacuum cleaners.
Many ideas involved materials besides latex, aiming for
thinner, stronger, less constricting condoms with better sensation, “reducing
the loving distance between partners, so they will be more close,” said Dr.
Papa Salif Sow, a Gates senior program officer. Other ideas focused on “how to
improve the donning,” he said, because “in sub-Saharan Africa , sex
is basically done with low light and it might be very difficult to see the
direction of the condom.”
Winners include the “ultrasensitive reconstituted collagen
condom” proposed by Apex Medical Technologies in San Diego . Apex’s president, Mark McGlothlin, said his product would
feel like skin and be made from collagen fibers from cows’ Achilles tendons or
possibly fish skin.
“They’re unbelievably strong,” said Mr. McGlothlin, who
currently gets beef tendon from a Vietnamese grocery. “I could yank all day and
not break this thing.”
A “wrapping condom” proposal by the California Family
Health Council in Los
Angeles will build on
a version manufactured in Colombia , made of polyethylene plastic that “clings like Saran Wrap
rather than squeezes,” according to Ron Frezieres, the council’s vice president
for research. It would come in three-packs the size of a credit card and almost
as thin, he said, and, like another grant winner called the Rapidom, would have
pull tabs to “keep you from being confused about which way to put it on,” Mr.
Frezieres added.
At least two winners will work with polyurethane, including
Richard Chartoff, a University of Oregon
Stephen Ward, a Gates Foundation program officer, said that
among the problems tackled were “improving lubrication, internal friction,
external friction, heat transfer.”
Two or more grantees might be teamed to make one design, he
added. “There’s not one magic bullet,” he said. “The idea is making them easier
for people to use in the moment, in the dark, whatever situation they’re in.”
