‘Villagers for carbon swap’ suggested

A leading Bangladeshi academic and development activist has come up with a novel way of overcoming the unwillingness of rich countries to put cash into a fund to help developing countries cope with the climatic changes produced by the greenhouse gas emissions of the industrialised world. He is proposing “villagers for carbon” swaps. “We’ll tell the industrialised countries, For every x-thousand tons of carbon you emit, you have to take the residents of a village from a developing country.’ “Let’s try that - and see how quickly the money comes”, Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Cenre for Advanced Studies, told NGOs attending the UN climate change negotiations in Bali, Indonesia. Earlier in he week, Oxfam said the amount rich countries had paid into a UN fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change was $67 million - which was less than Americans spend on suntan lotion each month.

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