“Get It Done” — Youth rep. Appadurai at COP17

Protests at COP 17 

Global climate movement on course of real solutions — Michael Dorsey

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Representing youth delegates, Anjali Appadurai, a student at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, spoke today [Democracy Now rebroadcast] at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban.

“I speak for more than half the world’s population,” she said. “We are the silent majority. You’ve given us a seat in this hall but our interests are not on the table.

Anjali Appadurai
Democracy Now image

“What does it take to get a stake in this game — Lobbyists? Corporate influence? Money? You’ve been negotiating all my life. In that time, you have failed to meet pledges, you’ve missed targets, and you’ve broken promises. But you’ve heard this all before.

“We are in Africa, home to communities on the front line of climate change. The world’s poorest countries need funding for adaptation now. The Horn of Africa and those nearby in KwaMashu needed it yesterday.

“But as 2012 dawns, our Green Climate Fund remains empty. The International Energy Agency tells us we have five years until the window to avoid irreversible climate change closes. The science tells us that we have five years maximum. You are saying, ‘Give us 10.’”

Youth protest at Durban

Betrayal

The starkest betrayal of your generation’s responsibility to ours is that you call this ‘ambition.’

Where is the courage in these rooms? Now is not the time for incremental action. In the long run, these moments will be seen as the defining moments of an era in which narrow self-interest prevailed over science, reason and common compassion.

There is real ambition in this room, but it has been dismissed as radical, deemed not politically possible.

Stand with Africa. Long-term thinking is not radical. What is radical is to completely alter the planet’s climate, to betray the future of my generation, and to condemn millions to death by climate change. What is radical is to write off the fact that change is within our reach.”

Movement Now

“Two thousand eleven [is] the year in which the silent majority found their voice, the year when the bottom shook the top.

“Two thousand eleven [is] the year when the radical became reality.

Common but differentiated and historical responsibilities are not up for debate.

Respect the foundational principles of this convention.

Respect the integral values of humanity.

Respect the future of your descendants.

 “‘It always seems impossible,’ Mandela said, “until it’s done.’

Protests at Durban

Distinguished delegates and governments around the world, governments of the developed world — deep cuts now. Get it done!

Mic check!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Mic check!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Equity now!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Equity now!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Equity now!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Equity now!

ANJALI APPADURAI: You’ve run out of excuses!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: You’ve run out of excuses!

ANJALI APPADURAI: We’re running out of time!

Protests at Durban

HUMAN MICROPHONE: We’re running out of time!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Get it done!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Get it done!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Get it done!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Get it done!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Get it done!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Get it done!

Kumi Naidoo

Published at Common Dreams, Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo writes about super powered obstruction of binding agreements at UNFCCC

“Here in Durban, the U.S. is once again trying to kill off the global climate talks by eviscerating the mid-summit draft agreement. On Saturday, the U.S. axed a whole section of the draft agreement that would have offered real protection to those who are being hardest and fastest hit by global warming.

“During the talks, the U.S. is fond of insisting that they want to be involved [and] at the same time makes derailing demands and announces commitments that barely survive the plane trip home.

“All of this wastes valuable time we can ill afford to waste as the most vulnerable citizens, economies, and habitats reel under the increasing impact of global warming.”

Before

“It has not always been so. 

“With the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the first Earth Summit in 1992, the world agreed that human-caused climate change was an important enough global issue that it deserved its own international law, like issues such as trade, war crimes, and human rights. 

“The U.S. signed and ratified that treaty, which also included a plan for later Protocols and legally-binding targets to reduce climate pollution. 

“Over the next several years, the U.S. delegation pushed aggressively for a treaty that included a pollution-reduction regime on greenhouse gases and a compliance mechanism ... and then it hit them — if the U.S. ratified Kyoto Protocol, they would have to deal with being the largest climate polluter!”

Bush to Obama governments trend backward

“It is deeply depressing that signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 was the beginning of U.S. climate treaty obstructionism, although U.S. neglect of treaties is par for the course. It’s been downhill ever since. The next step in bludgeoning any progress was when the U.S. ‘unsigned’ the Kyoto Protocol.“

U.S. President George W. Bush

“President George W. Bush made history by being the first to un-sign a treaty, which is possibly unprecedented in international law. Before Bush left office, his delegation at the Bali climate talks agreed to negotiate on the main issues that needed global cooperation, culminating in a controversial outcome two years later, in 2009, in Copenhagen. But, in Copenhagen they went on to play a huge part in making that conference possibly the most disappointing and controversial out of all 15 up to that point.“

Protests at Durban

U.S. President Barack Obama

“Team Obama picked up where Bush left off, introducing words and concepts into the negotiations in an attempt to mask that the U.S. was not prioritizing the climate. One of the first bombs was announcing that 2005 would be the new base year for a U.S. pollution target, and to speak as if any increase in emissions since 1990 was irrelevant. At the time, 2005 was the year of highest recorded U.S. climate pollution.

“The U.S. implied that EU efforts to reduce emissions between 1990 and 2005 were no longer a factor of the negotiations. This allowed the U.S. to argue that ‘comparability’ demonstrated the U.S. was as tough on climate pollution as the EU. The nearly business-as-usual U.S. target was 17 percent under 2005 levels by 2020. It would be 32 percent by  2020 if they were in compliance with the U.S. Kyoto commitment.

“Obama’s team was now disparaging Kyoto as a method of shirking fair and equitable commitments.

“Anyone can have an ambitious goal for 2050, forty years away. In Copenhagen the U.S. delegation did everything they could to undermine the importance of a legally binding agreement. They rolled out phrases such as ‘politically binding’ (meaning not legally binding) and ‘pledge and review’ (meaning not legally binding).

“We also know, because of Wikileaks, that the U.S. was strong-arming countries behind the scenes, with undiplomatic threats and tactics to bolster their bargaining power in the climate talks.“

COP17 protests

Now obstruction, COP 17 Durban

“Durban is not seeing any change in the carnage caused by the U.S.’s participation in these talks.

The negotiating position of the largest historical polluter has reached a new low in refuting that scientific consensus demands urgent and rapid pollution reduction. Leading up to Cancun, a year later, the U.S. was already backing away from weak commitments made in the Copenhagen Accord. It contained an agreement by the U.S. to contribute long-term finance, some portion of $100 billion per year by 2020.

The U.S. had also agreed to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the entity with intended responsibility for this long-term finance — No longer for the U.S. Some of their contribution would go to GCF — maybe; some of it would be public finance.

The U.S. raves about ‘leveraging private finance’ and includes loan guarantees and funding to U.S. companies as part of their contribution. 

Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation together are the largest sources of its ‘fast-start finance,’ or $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Export-Import provided over $4 billion to fossil fuel projects last year alone.

“While it is true that the personalities, egos, and IDs of individual delegates affect overall progress, for the United States, it is the basic negotiating position that is tarnishing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] process now and for the last thirteen years.“

Therefore, Naidoo concludes —

“The time has come for the U.S. to stand aside. If it is not willing to save lives, save jobs and save whole ecosystems then it should get out of the way and let those who are willing move on. Any failure to move beyond U.S. obstructionism will be measured in lives.“

Politics, U.S.-led Regression

Friends of the Earth policy analyst Kate Horner today with Democracy Now spoke about the U.S. killing the only legally binding instrument that we have to address climate change: the Kyoto Protocol.

Horner and Dorsey
Durban DN discussion

The United States, she said, “has a long history in multilateral affairs of weakening and delaying international deals where they don’t have domestic legislation in place.” The U.S. position at COP 17 is shaped substantially by polarized politics and its failure to secure legislation at home. “First they refused to commit to the Kyoto Protocol; then they led [and continue to lead] an exit strategy from the Kyoto Protocol.

“They are proposing a far weaker system called a pledge and review wherein pledges countries submit are determined merely by their domestic action — not by the global community’s determination of what will keep the world safe.”

Solutions rising not from State but from Global Justice Movement

Michael Dorsey, a professor in environmental studies at Dartmouth College,  hears the loud-mouthed climate change-denying politicians and focuses on the real movement. He suggests voting out the irrational climate change deniers.

 “The American people,” Dorsey said in that Democracy Now interview, “are sick and tired of sinister, mindless [denial of climate change] talk. The fact is that what is going on is a global climate movement, now grown beyond itself into a movement about climate justice.”

It is a “global outreach — putting people together to collaborate around the world on tackling this problem. Unlike the delayed diplomacy that we see coming out of the State, it is a global climate movement taking us on the course of real solutions.”

Sources and notes

“‘Get it done’: Urging Climate Justice, Youth Delegate Anjali Appadurai Mic Checks U.N. Summit,” Democracy Now, November 9, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/9/get_it_done_urging_climate_justice

“U.S. Obstructionism Is Hurting Climate Talks” [Kumi Naidoo, published on Thursday, December 8, 2011 by The Huffington Post]; also at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/08-6

Kumi Naidoo is Executive Director of Greenpeace International,

“Obama Admin Denounced for ‘Startling Level of Obstructionism and Defeatism’ on U.N. Climate Deal,” December 9, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/9/obama_admin_denounced_for_startling_level

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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Climate Change — Women, UNSG urgency now

Tibetan women

 Critical voices at Conference of Parties (COP17)

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Tibetan women speak

Old ways essential

Southern Plateau Tibet

Termed by the scientists as the ‘Third Pole,’ owing to its storage of glacier ice and its status as a reservoir for the world’s largest rivers which feed one billion people in 10 downstream countries in South East Asia, Tibet now faces a rapid ecological disturbance, said Tibetan women at COP 17.

 “Despite the climate-change crisis, China has begun constructing mega-dams and water diversion projects to capture and redirect water from India and South East Asia to its increasingly thirty provinces.”

Human Rights emergency 

Tibet, China, Island nations

“The forcible removal of all of Tibet’s 2.25 million nomadic herders by China under the pretext of conservation has caused a human rights emergency. This crisis has cropped up despite scientific evidence that proves that nomads have a positive role in promoting a balance in the ecosystem, diversity and resilience.”

Grenada’s UN ambassador, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States speaks

Small Island nations need destruction stopped now

Grenada

Speaking from COP 17 with Democracy Now producer Amy Goodman in Durban, South Africa, Ambassador Dessima Williams said, “Waiting until 2020 … is a nonstarter.”

Last year “was the hottest year on record and the impact on our countries, our island states in particular, is intolerable — for water supply, food, health. The sea-level rise is going to swallow up more of our islands. Waiting until 2020 to regulate the system is certainly a nonstarter here.

Grenada's UN Ambassador

“The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) along with the Least Developed Countries Group has been pushing for more immediate and urgent actions in the negotiations as a whole, and particularly with regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Politics

Dessima Williams acknowledged the political influence of individual nations but kept the voice of urgency, impact and effort focused on small and island nations. “Every country is playing according to its own national politics,” she said. “The politics of the U.S. has to be discussed with U.S. politicians.

“For the LDCs [Least Developed Countries] and the island countries, our national politics have to do with our existentialist survival — that the islands are experiencing floods and hurricanes and typhoons.

“The African continent, the Asian countries are experiencing, expecting droughts and floods — all of which are unusual compared to the pre-industrial period; and all are attributed to the escalation in the temperature of the earth.

“Here at the United Nations are 107 countries that we represent together …, who know that there is a threat to our food crops, to our healthcare, to our coastal regions  — so I don’t think you will find among us any climate deniers.”

Looking across the globe, Williams said, it is not only the least developed and island countries. “In Thailand, in Russia, in Los Angeles—everywhere in the world — we are having these unnatural and abnormal weather systems.

“We have a regime in place that can respond to it so we are calling for urgency. We are calling for effective response that will protect the most vulnerable right away and protect everybody altogether.”

Rural Women of Southern Africa speak

“We’ve come to join other rural women farmers from the southern African region,” said Thandiure Chidararume, a member of ActionAid, an international organization that helped bring together a meeting of the Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly.

“We have come as one voice from Africa. We are saying ‘no’ to damning deals. Africa is not for sale. We want this air pollution that is causing climate change to stop now.”

Director of the South African Trust for Community Outreach and Education  Mercia Andrews, in solidarity with the Rural Women’s Assembly, is reported saying, “We have a responsibility, we have to begin to mobilize and we have the power. … We have shaken this country before, we brought down apartheid; now is another turn.

“This is a bigger struggle, a more important struggle and this is a struggle that we must unite around.  We must say, ‘No to climate apartheid.’

The Rural Women’s Assembly published demands.

Destroyers called to account, honor human rights, get serious about climate change

DEMANDS

A climate deal that will take meaningful steps to halt the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions. Historical emitters who are responsible for 75 percent of GHGs [Greenhouse gases] must face trade and investment sanctions if they refuse to cut emissions, particularly from African governments. Africa   contributes least to climate change but is the worst affected.

Proper recognition of women’s critical role — despite widespread violation of their equal right to land — in fighting climate change and protecting livelihoods and the environment. Equal rights to land and natural resources are critical to fighting climate change. Further, that governments implement the principle of 50/50 land to women through a radical program of land redistribution and agrarian reform.

Financial support for women farmers commensurate to their numbers and crucial role — women produce 80 percent of the food consumed by households in Africa; 70 percent of Africa’s 600 million people are rural. We stress that adaptation strategies and building resilience starts at the household level. Governments must address the crisis in the care economy in order to build resistance to climate change. Further, that 50 percent of funding training and other support to agriculture go to women farmers secured by a special allocation within the Green Climate Fund and public budgets.

COP 17 Plenary

Climate change solutions put indigenous knowledge systems at the center of policies to promote biodiversity, to rehabilitate our ecosystems and to rebuild the livelihoods destroyed by colonialism, apartheid and economic imperialism. Rural women are the holders of indigenous knowledge — our marginalization from economic production, scientific knowledge generation and social systems has resulted in the steady loss of such knowledge to Africa, thereby making us more vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

An end to false climate solutions, which are resulting in a deterioration of our environments, the destruction of marine life as well as land and resource grabs and the takeover of food systems by corporations and speculators. We reject the participation of Africa in carbon markets, GMO projects and biofuels farming. Climate change can be addressed [seriously] only by changing the current economic system, which encourages unsustainable resource extraction and consumption.

Africa's Rural Women

“We commit ourselves to continue forward with the struggle against the injustices of climate change and to build our movement to end the shameful marginalization of rural women,” said the Rural Women’s Assembly of the Southern Africa region. “We will continue to strive for the re-creation of equitable vibrant, prosperous and healthy rural communities.”

UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon

For all on the planet, UN Secretary-General laid out the global case, cause and challenge

Taking his turn at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), COP17, dais, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday reflected on the job that takes him around the world. In one of his travel stops on the Pacific island of Kiribati, Ban Ki-moon said he met a young boy who said he was afraid of sleeping inside his home at night — afraid of being swept away by the tide.

Nations in rising waters

The boy’s land, his island “is slipping beneath the waves,” Ban Ki-moon reported to the Conference of Parties; and “there are many such islands in the Pacific and elsewhere.

“In the Andes and the Alps, I have seen melting glaciers. At both of the Earth’s Poles, I have seen open sea where ice once dominated the horizon. I have seen arid lands wherein the sun once shone on mighty rivers and great lakes — in the Amazon, flying over Lake Chad in the African Sahel and flying over the Aral Sea on the vast steppe of Central Asia.… Last month, I flew over miles and miles of devastated virgin forest and peat land in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

“I have met, personally, with thousands of people who have lost all they had to catastrophic floods and spreading deserts.”

He then asked, “Is this the future we want?”

Surrounded

“The science is clear,” he said.

“The World Meteorological Organization has reported that carbon emissions are at their highest in history and rising. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us, unequivocally, that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by half by 2050 — if we are to keep the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees since pre-industrial times. According to the International Energy Agency, we are nearing the ‘point of no return,’ and we must pull back from the abyss.”

Challenge

 UNITED NATIONS

To the Conference of Parties, the Secretary-General challenged, “You are the people who can bring us from the edge. The world is looking to you for leadership. Everywhere, people ask me for help — they ask for our help as the United Nations — as nations, united.

“We must keep up our momentum. That is the challenge before us today. That is the imperative. It is difficult to overstate the gravity of this moment. Without exaggeration, we can say the future of our planet is at stake: People’s lives, the health of global economy, the very survival of some nations.

“A world of out-of-control climate change, a devastating scarcity of vital resources? A world divided bitterly between rich and poor, between the vulnerable and the privileged — is that what you want? Or do we want a sustainable future that fulfils the promise of the United Nations Charter?”

The exact path may not be clear but the answer is clear, Ban Ki-moon said. “We all recognize the realities of our time: the economic crisis, the dictates of fiscal austerity, often difficult domestic politics. Yet the world and its people cannot accept ‘no’ for an answer in Durban. To the contrary … now is the moment to be ambitious.”

Sources and notes

TIBETAN WOMEN

“Tibetan Women Speak out on Climate Justice for Tibet at UN Conference,” two members of Tibetan Women’s Association [Tenzin Woebum, Head of Women’s Environment and Development Desk; Tenzin Dolma, Joint Secretary of TWA] representing Tibet Third Pole are participating in the two-week Conference of Parties (COP17), an undertaking of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),  Durban, South Africa, posted December 6, 2011 by Rajeshwari K, The Tibet Post International http://www.thetibetpost.com/en/features/environment-and-health/2227-tibetan-women-speak-out-on-climate-justice-for-tibet-at-un-conference

“Least Developed Countries, Small Island States Face U.S. Resistance to Binding Climate Deal,” December 7, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/7/least_developed_countries_small_island_states

Dessima Williams is chair of the Alliance of Small Island States and Grenada’s ambassador to the United Nations [also on the Democracy Now segment was Pa Ousman Jarju from The Gambia is the Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) Group].

DESSIMA WILLIAMS

Dr. Dessima Williams, chair of AOSIS Bureau and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of Grenada to the United Nations

Dr. Williams’ diplomatic service includes serving as Grenada’s NGO observer/delegate to various General Assembly sessions; NGO delegate to the 1995 Fourth United Nations Conference on Women and NGO Forum in Beijing; and NGO delegate to the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen, Denmark, also in 1995. She serves on the board of the Inter-Agency Group of Development Organizations in Grenada, and the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C.

She is author of the report Gender Dimensions of HIV/AIDS in Grenada; and co-author of a multi-volume report to the United Kingdom Department for International Development, Realization of Human Rights in the Caribbean Territories (2002). Her academic credentials include a doctorate in international relations and master’s in international development (American University, Washington, D.C.); international relations baccalaureate (University of Minnesota)

Dr. Williams has extensive academic experience as an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at Brandeis University (2003 to 2006); visiting Professor at Florida Atlantic University (2002); and Jacob Ziskind Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology (Brandeis, 1992-1995). http://www.sidsnet.org/aosis/bureau.html

AOSIS

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that share similar development challenges and concerns about the environment, especially their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. AOSIS functions primarily as an ad hoc lobby and negotiating voice for small island developing States (SIDS) within the United Nations system.

AOSIS has a membership of 42 States and observers drawn from all oceans and regions of the world: Africa, Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, Pacific and South China Sea. Thirty-seven are members of the United Nations, close to 28 percent of developing countries, and 20 percent of the UN’s total membership. Together, SIDS communities constitute some five percent of the global population.

Member States of AOSIS work together primarily through their New York diplomatic Missions to the United Nations. AOSIS functions on the basis of consultation and consensus. Major policy decisions are taken at ambassadorial-level plenary sessions. The Alliance does not have a formal charter. There is no regular budget, nor a secretariat. With the Permanent Representative of Saint Lucia as its current chair, AOSIS operates, as it did under previous leadership, out of the chairperson’s Mission to the United Nations, http://www.sidsnet.org/aosis/about.html

News from AOSIS December 1, 2011 — “AOSIS rejects delay until 2020, demands urgency for climate agreement,”

Durban, South Africa – The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) says it will not accept outcomes at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP17 that propose to delay any new binding agreement or more ambitious emissions reductions until 2020, as these cannot safeguard livelihoods and guarantee the survival of our nations.

http://aosis.info/2011/aosis-rejects-delay-until-2020-%e2%80%93-demands-urgency-for-climate-agreement/

CAPTION

Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States Dessima Williams urges negotiators to uphold the Kyoto Protocol (AFP/File, Attila Kisbenedek), http://aosis.info/2011/un-talks-start-in-panama-on-climate-deadlock/

Statement of Grenada’s representative to the United Nations: “Countries that are serious about addressing climate change should be using this meeting to raise, not lower, expectations for Durban.”

AFRICA’S RURAL WOMEN

At Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Durban

The Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly unites women’s farming and agricultural unions and movements from around the world. The women’s assembly is mostly skeptical about whether governments are acting on their behalf. They say COP17 conferees “are not acting in the peoples’ interest.”

Women’s movements in Latin America have also expressed solidarity with the African women’s assembly.

Caption: Members of African rural women's movements gather in Durban, South Africa to rally for progress at the nearby U.N. climate summit, November 30, 2011. (Photo VOA - Gabe Joselow)

Caption, http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/Rural-Women-in-Africa-Speak-Out-at-Climate-Conference-134825718.html

Memorandum from the Rural Women’s Assembly to the UNFCCC, the government of the Republic of South Africa and the Governments of Africa, http://www.climate-justice-now.org/memorandum-from-the-rural-womens-assembly-to-the-unfccc-the-government-of-the-republic-of-south-africa-and-the-governments-of-africa/

Free Speech Radio News “At climate talks U.S. inaction prompts activists to shift strategy as deforestation plan debated” [News Segments Tuesday 12/06/2011, MP3 Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

Climate talks in Durban, South Africa, entered their high-level phase, which means negotiations between more senior officials with more power to cut deals. Attention is turning to efforts to protect the world’s forests. This is seen as a key part of fighting climate change but the strategy so far has yielded mixed results. http://fsrn.org/audio/climate-talks-us-inaction-prompts-activists-shift-strategy-deforestation-plan-debated/9526

UN SECRETARY-GENERAL

“Remarks to High Level Segment of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP17” [Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Durban, South Africa], December 6, 2011, http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/statments_full.asp?statID=1404

Sahel (Arabic Sāḥil), semiarid region of western and north-central Africa extending from Senegal eastward to The Sudan. It forms a transitional zone between the arid Sahara (desert) to the north and the belt of humid savannas to the south. The Sahel stretches from the Atlantic Ocean eastward through northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, the great bend of the Niger River in Mali, Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), southern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, south-central Chad, and into The Sudan [Britannica note] 

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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