UK-India conversation on climate change

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Friday was a busy day for the British Government on climate change. With 161 days to go until the UN climate conference in Copenhagen lots of the Government's big guns were in action.

Firstly, PM Gordon Brown gave a major speech in which he set out how much money should be provided to cut greenhouse gas emissions and help vulnerable countries adapt to its unavoidable impacts: around $100 billion per year by 2020. He also set out key principles to determine how that climate finance should be raised and spent:

• Contribution to and allocation of climate finance should be equitable
• Funds should be additional to the money the UK and other countries have already committed for overseas development assistance and to meet the Millennium Development Goals
• The sources of funding should be predictable, to allow long-term investment
• And there should be shared governance arrangements of how climate finance is spent, to give developing countries a stronger voice and ensure a country-led approach to support national plans

On the same day, UK Cabinet Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Ed Miliband, launched "The Road to Copenhagen" in the House of Commons, a manifesto which makes the case for an ambitious international agreement on climate change in Copenhagen. You can access the speech and the manifesto on the UK Government's new website www.ActonCopenhagen.gov.uk, also launched on Friday - which is designed to allow people to join the debate on the shape of the Copenhagen deal and get updates on how the negotiations are progressing.

I'd be really interested to get your reactions to the speech and the manifesto. Do you agree with everything they say? Do they say anything particularly well? Or are there principles or proposals that you really disagree with? As I've said before on this blog, I'm writing it to try and broaden the UK-India conversation on climate change - so go on, I'm all ears!