Bengaluru: G20 environment group to tackle land degradation, circular economy

The additional secretary said India intends to leverage the 'Mission Life', a call given by Modi at Glasgow COP26 for change in lifestyle to reduce stress on the environment

As the chair of G20, India aims to come up with an online database for exchange of knowledge and solutions regarding prevention and restoration of land degradation and circular economy.

Ahead of the first meeting of the Environment and Climate Change Working Group (ECCWG) scheduled to be held from February 9 to 11, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) Additional Secretary Richa Sharma said India would steer the discussion of climate change towards land degradation, building a sustainable blue economy and setting ambitious goals for circular economy.

"We hope to adopt a G20 framework to combat land degradation. We also hope to develop an online knowledge and solutions exchange platform for land restoration projects and a platform on circular economy, including such measures as extended product responsibility (EPR)," she said.

Noting that the entire exercise will be a consensus-driven process, she said India will publish a series of studies to back the meeting's agenda. She said the extraction of up to 70 per cent more virgin minerals than what the Earth can generate requires urgent adoption of sustainable practices from lifestyle change to circular economy.
The additional secretary said India intends to leverage the 'Mission Life', a call given by the prime minister at the COP26 meet in Glasgow for change in lifestyle to reduce stress on the environment.

"We intend to leverage the call to define a new sustainable and resilient development paradigm for the G20 countries," she said, noting that the countries account for 80 per cent of the world's annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Several technical sessions will be held on biodiversity, against the backdrop of the reports of a 69 per cent decline in monitored population of vertebrates, a special session on sustainable and resilient blue economy in the face of ocean warming and seal-level rise and ocean acidification that threatens global GDP of $44 trillion.

The three day-events are part of the first of the four meetings to be held in the next few months. At the end, the ECCWG meetings will produce the Declaration of the Environment and Climate Ministers of the G20 countries, setting the group's sustainability goals.

Aside from officials from several ministries, representatives from 19 member countries and 10 guest countries. Several United Nations bodies and other expert organisations will take part.