Energy neglect hurting poverty fight: U.N. climate chief

Nobel Peace Prize winner and Chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri speaks during his felicitation ceremony organised by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in New Delhi December 15, 2007.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Giving energy to the poor should have been a Millennium Development Goal and a "glaring neglect" of the sector is holding back the world's fight against poverty, the head of the U.N. climate panel said on Wednesday.

Rajendra Pachauri said developing countries such as his native India need to confront the "huge gap" in energy supply to the poor even as those nations must prepare for the acute effects of climate change.

Pachauri, whose panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, said meeting the poor's energy needs should have been listed as a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) when the issue was debated at a key development summit more than six years ago.

"As a result of the insistence by some country governments, and in fact particularly just one country government, the whole sector of energy was dropped from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," Pachauri said at a seminar in New Delhi.

"Today energy remains the missing MDG."

Energy was discussed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, Pachauri said, though he did not elaborate on which countries blocked its inclusion.

"Without the provision of adequate and appropriate supply of energy ... we would be falling far short of what is desired and what we need to achieve in eliminating poverty across rural areas across the world," Pachauri said.

There are 1.6 billion people without electricity in the world, which impacts their health, education and ability to work, Pachauri said.

(Editing by Alistair Scrutton)