November 21, 2013

DEVELOPING NATIONS STAGE PROTEST AT CLIMATE TALKS

Posted by The Himalayan Voice:
[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 Warsaw. 
Rich and poor countries are at odds over damages for disaster losses.
WARSAW — The United Nations climate talks here are bogging down over the old divide between rich and poor nations on the question of who should pay when climate-related disaster strikes, with developing nations staging a symbolic walkout early Wednesday in protest at what they consider inadequate financial support from wealthy countries.
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 chemical engineer, who foresees a “one-size-fits-all” design having shape memory to “fit like an extra layer of skin, conforming to the shape.” He is also considering adding nanoparticles containing antiviral or antibacterial drugs, and, more prosaically, offering different colors.]
By 
The condom of the future might be made of cow tendon or fish skin. It might have “shape memory” to instantly mold to a specific man. Or it might come with pull tabs so a man could slip it on with little fuss.
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 chemical engineer, who foresees a “one-size-fits-all” design having shape memory to “fit like an extra layer of skin, conforming to the shape.” He is also considering adding nanoparticles containing antiviral or antibacterial drugs, and, more prosaically, offering different colors.
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.”