The British Minister of State, department of energy and climate change, Mr Gregory Barker, said on Friday that the London Olympics 2012 would be the “greenest Olympics ever.”

“We want to raise the benchmarks for Olympics Games,” Mr Barker said promising to keep the carbon footprint to the minimum. The British Minister was addressing a UK-India partnership programme in Kolkata for developing fiscal instruments for climate friendly industrial development in West Bengal, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.

The project is aimed at helping the three states adopt appropriate fiscal instruments by 2013 to mobilise low carbon investment and facilitate cleaner industrial development.

The programme will recommend appropriate fiscal incentives, not requiring any extra budgetary support, to the respective State Governments.

Commenting on climate issues, Mr Barker said that with increasing prosperity India should also share the environmental responsibilities.

“In UK we need to reduce our carbon emission in absolute terms. Nobody expects India to follow a similar path,” he said adding that as the country gets most prosperous it should also share the global concern.

Mr T. Ramachandru, chairman of Industrial Development Corporation of Odisha Ltd, felt that enforcing existing set of environmental restrictions should get priority. Also, the fiscal incentives should be offered to ensure transfer of “prohibitively costly” clean technologies.

The West Bengal Environment Minister, Mr Sudarshan Ghosh Dastidar, said that managing industrial growth with minimum impact on environment would be the biggest challenge in the future.

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