Paris climate meet must have universal agreement: French envoy

French Ambassador Francois Richier today said the climate change conference in Paris later this year should frame a "universal agreement" of all countries' commitment to reduce rising temperature and that it must address different situations of carbon emission faced by them.
"It should be a universal agreement as it the biggest challenge to bring everyone on the same page but also differentiated as everyone face peculiar situations in regard to carbon emission," Richier said at a conference on climate change organised by ASSOCHAM.
"We have the lowest carbon emission in Europe and probably in the western world due to the size of our nuclear energy sector. Therefore, we are not in the same basket in comparison to other developed countries. So the agreement has to be differentiated. Likewise, India has a high carbon emission with very low per capita emission," he said.

He said that energy will be the first chapter to be addressed in the conference as it is the key factor in rising temperature.
"Energy contributes 70 per cent to the increasing temperature or carbon emission. The ambitious agenda that Indian government has set-up for renewal energy is exactly the kind of measure that is needed to be adopted everywhere," he said.
Speaking on private sector financing the climate change initiative, he said that the role of business community is of utmost important in mitigating the challenge but it should move parallel to the scientific opinions.
"There is more and more investment in solar energy and technology. This is a signal that people in business community are already thinking of long term and this is very encouraging situation."

"It is also important to ensure that the views of the financial community and that of scientific community move together in order to arrive at positive result in the respect of climate change," the ambassador said.