John Vidal

 A waste-picker at work in Mumbai. Waste-pickers handle much of the growing mountains of rubbish in developing countries.

 The waste-pickers who scour the world's rubbish dumps and daily recycle thousands of tonnes of metal, paper and plastics are up in arms against the U.N., which they claim is forcing them out of work and increasing climate change emissions.

Their complaint, heard on Wednesday in Bonn where the U.N. global climate change talks have resumed. The pickers say the clean development mechanism (CDM), an ambitious climate finance scheme designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries, has led to dozens of giant waste-to-energy incinerators being built to burn municipal rubbish, as well as hundreds of new landfill schemes designed to collect methane gas.