President to speak at development summit |27 January 2011

Climate change and sustainable development for small island states will be among the key issues on which he will speak.

Mr Michel was invited to this 11th summit of the World Sustainable Development Forum – under the theme Tapping local initiatives and tackling global inertia – which is organised by the Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) in New Delhi.

The director-general of Teri, Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri – who is also chairman of the intergovernmental panel for climate change – held talks with President Michel last June during his state visit to India when he also visited the institute.

The Delhi Sustainable Development Summit will also be attended by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, and the President of the Dominican Republic Leonel Fernandez Reyna, as well as former heads of state and heads of government, decision-makers from government, the private sector, NGOs, multi/bilateral organisations, academia and research institutions.

Nobel Prize laureates Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University, USA), Dr Yuan-Tseh Lee (president, Academia Sinica, Taiwan) and Professor Sir James A. Mirrlees (University of Cambridge) will also address the conference.