British minister urges to make Copenhagen climate change meet a fair deal

New Delhi, Oct 22 (ANI): Britain's Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change, Lord Hunt, has praised the climate change conference being held in New Delhi as an important precursor to debate thorny issues ahead of Copenhagen meeting.

He admitted on Thursday that it would be very difficult to garner consensus on the carbon emission cuts percentage.

However, he urged that the Copenhagen meet, to be held in December this year, will have to be made a success wherein countries will abide to low carbon emission policies without compromising on their sustainable and consistent development.

Hunt said that his country fully shares India's desire and need for all-round growth, which would need a lot of energy.

"Developing countries I know are concerned that any agreement at Copenhagen on climate change will actually inhibit or slowdown their economic growth. Now we well understand that developing countries need to grow that they need to deal with poverty, that they need to invest in their infrastructure, that they need all their people to have access to electricity, these are very important goals which United Kingdom government fully shares. But what we are talking about is development in a way which doesn't damage the climate," said Lord Hunt, UK Energy and Climate Change Minister.

He said that developed countries like the UK are only asking to use low carbon emission and to generate energy through environment-friendly means to fulfill the needs of one billion plus population.

He said the Copenhagen treaty should be a win-win situation for all countries, without compromising on developing countries' need for growth.

Earlier in the day, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that developing countries like India won't compromise on development but would do its bit to keep the green house gas emissions at sustainable and equitable level and to ensure that its per capita carbon emissions would not exceed emissions of developed countries.

Lord Hunt is in New Delhi to attend the two-day conference on 'Climate Change: Technology Development and Transfer' at New Delhi that began on Thursday (October 22). (ANI)