Aid agencies plan CO2 offsets that also help poor

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London, Sep 2: From fuel-efficient stoves for displaced Congolese families to drought-resistant cashew trees in Brazil, some aid agencies offering carbon offset schemes want to marry emissions savings with help for people living with climate change.

A London-based coalition is launching a new funding scheme to address concerns about existing trade in carbon credits - primarily that this excludes the world's poorest communities, which are most at risk from the impact of global warming.

"This is very much not a minor absolution for your carbon sins, but is honestly a compensation payment for the impact you know your personal carbon emissions will have," said Andrew Simms, policy director at the New Economics Foundation (NEF), coordinating the initiative with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

The consortium says its scheme differs from conventional carbon offsetting - which has focused mostly on promoting renewable energy - because it will also help vulnerable people cope with phenomena such as more severe droughts and floods.

In the jargon, it will fuse mitigation - measures to curb carbon dioxide emissions -- with adaptation - activities enabling people to deal with climate-related problems they are already experiencing. Over the coming year, the approach will be tested in regions expected to be worst and soonest hit by climate change in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Pilot projects will prioritise adaptation: for example teaching Indian children to swim so they can survive floods, and planting the drought-resistant cashew trees whose fruit pulp families plan to sell to schools for income.

But they will also include mitigation steps such as providing solar-powered lighting for girls in Mauritania to do their homework after dark, and solar-powered freezers to store the Brazilian cashew apple pulp which makes juice. The partners - including the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Greenpeace, CARE International and Trocaire -- describe the scheme as a way for charities, business and individuals to take responsibility for the damage caused by their carbon emissions in the short term.

They call people who help fund the scheme investors, rather than donors: the capital involved is human as well as financial.

"It connects me with a human being at the other end of the world who's being affected by my pollution, and I then invest in that person and relate to that person, and feel there is solidarity between us," said Saleemul Huq, head of the climate change group at IIED.