by
Anuradha on December 9, 2007
2 comments

adaptation, carbon-swaps, UN-climate-change-conference-2007, virtual-bali
A Bangladeshi academic has come up with a novel idea for persuading rich countries to fund southern communities adapting to climate change

Bangladesh is at the mercy of more extreme weather events now
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OneWorld UK
I have just been reading a hilarious story on OneWorld.net's front page (see links above), from Daniel Nelson, currently reporting from the UN Bali Conference on Climate Change.
| He writes: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 the 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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Update from Bali -- Dr. Rahman just came by and we threatened to make him the first volunteer. "Not available," he shouted on his way out down the hall.