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Last chance to save Kyoto deal at climate talks

Last chance to save Kyoto deal at climate talks
By Jon Herskovitz and Agnieszka Flak | Reuters

DURBAN (Reuters) - Almost 200 nations began global climate talks on Monday with time running out to save the Kyoto Protocol aimed at cutting the greenhouse gas emissions scientists blame for rising sea levels, intense storms, drought and crop failures.

Poor nations say wealthy countries became rich using coal, oil and gas and that they must be allowed to burn fossil fuels to escape poverty. Rich nations say major developing economies, such as China, India and Brazil, must submit to emissions cuts if the world has any chance of halting dangerous climate change.

The stakes are high. Two U.N. reports this month said greenhouse gases had reached record levels in the atmosphere and a warming world would likely bring more floods, stronger cyclones and more intense droughts.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said global average temperatures could rise by 3-6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century if governments failed to contain emissions, bringing unprecedented destruction as glaciers melt and sea levels rise.

It said an 80 percent rise in global energy demand was set to raise carbon dioxide (Co2) emissions by 70 percent by 2050 and transport emissions were expected to double, due in part to a surge in demand for cars in developing nations.

E.U. climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger told a news conference unless progress was made: "(People) will just lose confidence in this travelling circus. How high must the water get in these conference places before the negotiators start deciding?"

Flash flooding from heavy rain killed at least six people in Durban the night before the talks opened.
The Kyoto Protocol commits most developed nations to legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The talks in Durban are the last chance to set another round of targets before the first stage of the protocol ends in 2012.

"It may seem impossible, but you can get it done," Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, told delegates.

People participate in the "Walk the Future" event through the streets of Durban November 27, 2011. According to organizers the walk along The Blue Line, a blue line painted on the ground by artist Strijdom van der Merwe, highlights rising sea levels and the challenge of climate change. It is led by The Premier of KwaZulu Natal, Dr Zweli Mkhize. REUTERS/Rogan Ward

SMALL STEPS

Diplomats hope there will be some progress on funding to help developing countries most at risk from the effects of global warming, particularly in Africa and small island states.

Rich nations have committed to a goal of providing $100 billion (64.3 billion pounds) a year in climate cash by 2020. But the United States and Saudi Arabia have objected to some aspects of the Green Climate Fund that will help manage it.

There is also a chance that some nations will pledge deeper emissions cuts.

But the debt crisis hitting the euro zone and the United States makes it unlikely those countries will provide more aid or impose new measures that could hurt their growth prospects.

E.U. envoys said they want a new deal for emissions cuts reached by 2015 and in place by 2020, and it will only be effective if major polluters sign on.

Any accord depends on China and the United States, the world's top emitters, agreeing to binding action under a wider deal by 2015, something both have resisted for years.

Russia, Japan and Canada say they will not sign up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol unless the biggest emitters do too. The United States, which never ratified the protocol, warned its commitments would be tied to pledges made by major emerging economies.

"The structure of a legal agreement in which we are bound and those economies are not is untenable. It will not solve the problem. It will not be accepted in the United States," U.S. climate envoy Jonathan Pershing said.

Negotiators said there may be a deal struck with a new set of binding targets but only the European Union, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and Switzerland were likely to sign up

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) said: "If Durban puts off a legally binding agreement and closes the door on raising mitigation ambition before 2020 many of our small island states will be literally and figuratively doomed."

Despite nations' individual emissions-cut pledges and the Kyoto pact, the United Nations, International Energy Agency and others say they are not enough to prevent the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, a threshold beyond which scientists say the climate risks becoming unstable.

Countries agreed last year in Cancun that deep emissions cuts were needed to hold temperature rises below 2 degrees C.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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Recycling hotel soap to save lives


Recycling hotel soap to save lives
By Ebonne Ruffins, CNN
June 16, 2011



Atlanta (CNN) -- That bar of soap you used once or twice during your last hotel stay might now be helping poor children fight disease.

Derreck Kayongo and his Atlanta-based Global Soap Project collect used hotel soap from across the United States. Instead of ending up in landfills, the soaps are cleaned and reprocessed for shipment to impoverished nations such as Haiti, Uganda, Kenya and Swaziland.

"I was shocked just to know how much (soap) at the end of the day was thrown away," Kayongo said. Each year, hundreds of millions of soap bars are discarded in North America alone. "Are we really throwing away that much soap at the expense of other people who don't have anything? It just doesn't sound right."

Kayongo, a Uganda native, thought of the idea in the early 1990s, when he first arrived to the U.S. and stayed at a hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He noticed that his bathroom was replenished with new soap bars every day, even though they were only slightly used.

"I tried to return the new soap to the concierge since I thought they were charging me for it," Kayongo said. "When I was told it was just hotel policy to provide new soap every day, I couldn't believe it."
Kayongo called his father -- a former soap maker in Uganda -- and shared the experience.


Derreck Kayongo, a Uganda native, started the Global Soap Project in 2009.

"My dad said people in America can afford to throw it away. But I just started to think, 'What if we took some of this soap and recycled it, made brand new soap from it and then sent it home to people who couldn't afford soap?' "

For Kayongo, collecting soap is "a first line of defense" mission to combat child-mortality around the world.

Each year, more than 2 million children die from diarrheal illness -- the approximate population of San Antonio, Texas. According to the World Health Organization, these deaths occur almost exclusively among toddlers living in low-income countries.

"The issue is not the availability of soap. The issue is cost," Kayongo said. "Make $1 a day, and soap costs 25 cents. I'm not a good mathematician, but I'm telling you I'm not going to spend that 25 cents on a bar of soap. I'm going to buy sugar. I'm going to buy medicine. I'm going to do all the things I think are keeping me alive.

"When you fall sick because you didn't wash up your hands, it's more expensive to go to the hospital to get treated. And that's where the problem begins and people end up dying."


Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2011 CNN Heroes

Kayongo, 41, is familiar with the stress that poverty and displacement can create. Almost 30 years ago, he fled Uganda with his parents because of the mass torture and killings by former Ugandan military dictator Idi Amin, he said.

Witnessing the devastation of his homeland shaped Kayongo's mission and still haunts him today.
Are we really throwing away that much soap at the expense of other people who don't have anything?
--CNN Hero Derreck Kayongo

"It's a long-term grieving process that sort of never ends," he said. "As a child coming from school, passing dead bodies for 10 solid years -- 'It's not cool,' as my son would put it. It's not good. A lot of my friends were orphaned, and I was lucky."

Kayongo and his parents fled to Kenya, where he would visit friends and family in refugee camps and struggle to survive -- sometimes without basic necessities.

"We lost everything," Kayongo said. "We didn't live in the camps, but we sacrificed a lot. The people worse off lived in the camps. Soap was so hard to come by, even completely nonexistent sometimes. People were getting so sick simply because they couldn't wash their hands."

Kayongo transitioned from the tough life of a refugee to become a college graduate, a U.S. citizen and a field coordinator for CARE International, a private humanitarian aid organization. But he has not forgotten his roots -- or the fact that many refugees in Africa continue to lack access to basic sanitation.

"As a new immigrant and a new citizen to this country, I feel very blessed to be here," he said. "But it's important, as Africans living in the Diaspora, that we don't forget what we can do to help people back at home. It's not good enough for us to complain about what other people aren't doing for us. It's important that we all band together, think of an idea and pursue it."

With the support of his wife, local friends and Atlanta-based hotels, Kayongo began his Global Soap Project in 2009.



So far, 300 hotels nationwide have joined the collection effort, generating 100 tons of soap. Some participating hotels even donate high-end soaps such as Bvlgari, which retails up to $27 for a single bar.

Web extra: CNN Hero Derreck Kayongo
http://cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2011/06/17/cnnheroes.kayongo.extra.cnn


Volunteers across the U.S. collect the hotel soaps and ship them to the group's warehouse in Atlanta. On Saturdays, Atlanta volunteers assemble there to clean, reprocess and package the bars.

"We do not mix the soaps because they come with different pH systems, different characters, smells and colors," Kayongo said. "We sanitize them first, then heat them at very high temperatures, chill them and cut them into final bars. It's a very simple process, but a lot of work."

A batch of soap bars is only released for shipment once one of its samples has been tested for pathogens and deemed safe by a third-party laboratory. The Global Soap Project then works with partner organizations to ship and distribute the soap directly to people who need it -- for free.

To date, the Global Soap Project has provided more than 100,000 bars of soap for communities in nine countries.

Kenya Relief is one organization that has benefited. Last summer, Kayongo personally delivered 5,000 bars of soap to Kenya Relief's Brittney's Home of Grace orphanage.

"When we were distributing the soap, I could sense that there was a lot of excitement, joy, a lot of happiness," said Kayongo, whose work was recently recognized by the Atlanta City Council, which declared May 15 as Global Soap Project Day in Atlanta.

"It's a reminder again of that sense of decency. They have (someone) who knows about their situation, and is willing to come and visit them ... to come and say, 'We are sorry ... We're here to help.' "

Want to get involved? Check out the Global Soap Project website at www.globalsoap.org and see how to help.

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The Dongria Kondh tribe + The Dongria Kondh fight to save Niyamgiri + The REAL "Avatar!" (full movie)


Mine, narrated by Joanna Lumley, tells the story of the remote Dongria Kondh tribe's struggle to protect Niyamgiri, the mountain they worship as a God. London-based mining company Vedanta Resources plans a vast open-pit bauxite mine in India's Niyamgiri hills, and the Dongria Kondh know that means the destruction of their forests, their way of life, and their mountain God.


The REAL "Avatar!" (full movie)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHcExHZR-q0


The Dongria Kondh tribe


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH9xXBgqM98


The Dongria Kondh fight to save Niyamgiri


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qLHBk9v-xw


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