People living on a dump. These Balinese collect plastic bottles and other stuff that can be sold for recycling. For a kilo of bottles, they get around 5 Euros. That's how recycling works on the island. It's a basic system but the only one that works. There are high-tech dumps elsewhere. But they're not working because nobody is able to maintain the machines. It seems to be the only way to get rid of all the garbage.

On the margins of the Cancun climate conference we have talked to Andreas Kohn who consults companies on the issue of emissions trading. He attends the conference to stay up to date on the regulatory and financial issues the COP16 negotiations may entail. The green strategy consultant told GLOBAL IDEAS why a fixation with numbers isn't always the best thing when it comes to saving our climate. Focusing solely on keeping the rise of global temperatures below 2 degrees this century is misleading – if we forget what this actually means in terms of dangerous climate change, he said.  

 

One of the topics of discussion at COP16 will be something called REDD. What is it? It stands for 'Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation' and it's a UN forest protection program. Basically, wealthy nations pay developing countries to preserve their forests, and in return they get "carbon credit" to use in the global carbon trading industry. Some countries, like Indonesia, are already taking part in the project. What do you think? Is this a good way to save our forests?