Sri Lanka has proposed the setting up of a Global Sustainable Development Bank to reverse the ill effects of global climate change crisis.

Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Patali Champika Ranawaka addressing the UN Climatic Change conference - COP14/MOP4 - the biggest and the most important climate summit - held at Poznan in Poland last week suggested the setting up of a new Bank, a Global Sustainable Development Bank to reverse the dangerous trend of climate change.

Minister Ranawaka said: "The aim of Sri Lanka’s proposal is to address the inadequacies of the old set of yardsticks used by the UN to gauge development, sans the environment aspect. Therefore, we propose to use a new index with more appropriate parameters such as per capita and total carbon emissions of a country and an ecological index to showcase the state of the world with the impact of human activity on it," he told the summit.

"While humbly taking the moral high ground on carbon emissions, as the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of Sri Lanka," he said, "let me propose to introduce a new set of parameters and guidelines to measure development and overhaul the archaic, obsolete old set of yardsticks which only went on to give a false sense of prosperity to a handful of industrialized countries."

He said more often than not those nations caused irreparable damage to mother earth in their efforts to reach material prosperity. They plundered the resources of other countries, squandered the carbon quotas of dozens and dozens of environment – friendly nations like Sri Lanka. Through exceeding their own quota in emissions, the industrialized countries had exploited not only the rights of the developing countries, but also the rights of the unborn in both worlds.

The aim of Sri Lanka’s proposal was to address the inadequacies of the old set of yardsticks used by the UN to gauge development, sans the environment aspect, he said.

Minister Ranawaka said therefore Sri Lanka had ventured to propose the use of a new index with more appropriate parameters such as per capita and total carbon emissions of a country and an ecological index to showcase the state of the world with the impact of human activity on it.