Hello from a dusty and humid Delhi, latest stop on a whirlwind first joint tour around south Asia by Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander.
Yesterday, the Climate Change and International Development Secretaries visited some of Bangladesh’s poorest farmers at the Chaluhara Char village by the Jamuna River, where UK DfID money is funding livestock grants and flood protection. To find out what happened there, on what is truly the front line of the battle against climate change, you will have to read my piece in the magazine tomorrow. But what I would say without shame is that this is an unsung Labour government achievement in action, and it felt a million miles from cynical Westminster.
Today, high politics is back on the agenda. After visiting a slum improvement project and India’s first solar housing complex in Kolkata last night, the ministers are, at the time of writing, locked in crucial talks with their Delhi counterparts. On the table for discussion is the year-end climate-change summit in Copenhagen. While Alexander has been stressing that the British delegation is here “not to lecture but to listen”, both men know they must try to persuade India to move towards some kind of commitment on carbon reduction in December. Miliband has been careful to point out that although he accepts the west’s “historic responsibility” for industrialisation and the emissions that came with it — and India’s natural right to develop — this country has a vested interest in preventing the type of climate change we saw close up and in startling detail yesterday during the tail end of the ministers’ visit to Bangladesh.
Alexander and Miliband will engage in a whole day of talks involving meetings with leading politicians, including Rahul Gandhi, son of Sonia, and other notables. Despite the diplomatic assurance that the UK will never prescribe, the stakes could not be higher.
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment