By KUNA
New Delhi : India is hosting Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS) beginning Thursday with climate change as its theme, which will witness participation from several heads of government. Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Finland Prime Minister Matti Vanhenen are likely to attend the three-day (Feb 7-9) summit.
They will be joined by Massoumeh Ebtekar, former vice president of Iran, Moritz Leuenberger, former president of Switzerland, Ruud F.M. Lubbers, former prime minister of The Netherlands, and Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico, an Indian government official told reporters here Wednesday.
The DSDS will be the first major international meet on climate change after the UN summit in Indonesia, last December. “At the summit, the leaders will discuss climate change in a situation where Green House Gas emissions into the atmosphere are already affecting agricultural output, increasing frequency and damage caused by droughts, floods and storms and raising sea levels across the world, but mainly in the tropics and sub-tropics,” the official said.
Environment ministers who are likely attend the summit are Anil Kumar Bachoo of Mauritius, A_cha Mint Sidi Bouna of Mauritania, Sayed Wajid Hussain Bukhari of Pakistan, Andreas Carlgren of Sweden, Maciej Nowicki of Poland, Maria Cristina Narbona Ruiz of Spain, Kimmo Yiilikainen of Finland, Dasho Paljor J. Dorji, Advisor to Bhutan’s National Environment Commission, Connie Hedegaard, Minister for Climate Change and Energy in Denmark, and Khempheng Pholsena, Minister for Water Resources in Laos.
F. Sherwood of the University of California and Carlo Rubbia of the European research agency CERN are the two Nobel laureates expected at the summit, the official informed.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission, Dmitri Piskounov of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, Katherine Sierra, vice president of the World Bank, and Xianbin Yao of the Asian Development Bank will also take part in the summit.