NITI Aayog to organise workshop on Green Development Pact for a Sustainable Future

NITI Aayog in partnership with Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW) is organizing a workshop on the “Green Development Pact (GDP) for a Sustainable Future” in India on November 9, 2023 at Le Meridien, Connaught Place, New Delhi. The workshop aims to gather practical insights for implementing the Geen Development Pact, as part of a series of discussions related to the G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration.

India’s G20 presidency emphasized that there is need for cooperative solutions amidst global challenges and successfully secured the adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration on the Green Development Pact. The workshop aims to generate actionable recommendations for the successful implementation of the Green Development Pact, with specific focus on energy transition, ecosystem conservation, and disaster-resilient infrastructure. The outcomes of the workshop will be compiled as an outcome document providing a blueprint for sustainable climate action globally.

The workshop is focused on three distinct sessions with each segment aimed to coalesce into specific action points and strategies that are required to implement the vision laid out in the NDLD:

1) Implementing Clean, Sustainable, Just, Affordable & Inclusive Energy Transition – To promote energy security, facilitate technology access, and encourage innovation, it is imperative to address the affordability and reliability of deploying clean and sustainable energy sources and technologies. At the same time there is a need to facilitate low cost finance and support reliable, diversified and responsible supply chains. Energy security, access and affordability, sustainability and justice would be main areas for discussions.

2) Restoring, Conserving and sustainably using ecosystems – The Leaders’ Declaration emphasizes the importance of healthy ecosystems in addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification, drought, land degradation, pollution, food insecurity and water scarcity. This theme consists of issues for discussion such as mainstreaming lifestyles for sustainable development (LiFE), designing a circular economy and ending plastic pollution.

3) Adaptation and disaster resilient infrastructure – The Leaders’ Declaration acknowledges the disproportionate impact of climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification and pollution on vulnerable communities with particular emphasis on women and girls. To build national and community resilience, India’s G20 Presidency catalyzed efforts in disaster risk reduction by “Institutionalizing the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Working Group”. Topics for discussion under this session include climate forecast, mainstreaming disaster risk and resilience, coastal states/ city-level preparation and financing climate resilience.

This workshop will endeavour to bring together various views from experts, entrepreneurs, innovators, academia, representatives of think-tanks, and government working on energy, environment, climate and disaster resilience to identify the way forward and the required resources to achieve the objectives and outcomes mentioned in the G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration.