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August 12, 2021 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm IST
Biodiversity Means Transition:
Transitioning the policy pathway towards “greening” of post-COVID economic recovery of India
Event Date: 12th August 2021, 16:00- 18:00 hours (IST)
OVERVIEW
Along with the countries across the globe, India has experienced substantial social, economic and environmental challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to mortality and morbidity, the pandemic has wreaked havoc on the Indian economy: both demand and supplies have been impacted, external supply and demand restrictions, as a result of the global recession and disruption of global supply chains took place. While these impacted both the formal and informal economy, but the intensity of impact was higher on the informal economy, which still represents a significant proportion of the Indian economy.
In response to the widespread economic impact of the pandemic, the Government of India announced approximately an Rs 20.97 Lakh Crore (US$266 billion) recovery package. This is one of the most significant stimulus packages in the world approximating 10% of GDP of the country. The package included measures for food system (e.g. public distribution system related measures), income support through direct benefit transfer, healthcare, social security, tax relief, economic stimulus for key sectors (e.g. micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), real estate, transport, power sector, banking and finance, corporates etc.), urbanization and others. The COVID recovery package aims at boosting the economy immediately through income generation and rise in consumer demand along with securing community health. But the Indian economy also remains heavily dependent on natural capital.
The same is true for several other countries in the global south. Hence, the stock and flow of natural capital has substantial implication on both economic growth and development. It is also important to note that a number of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also pertain to greening or natural capital. Out of 17 SDGs defined by the United Nations, 9 SDGs are directly associated with strengthening of natural capital that enables greening. Hence for enabling the country to cope with immediate impacts of the pandemic, while meeting the long terms economic and developmental goals a greener economic recovery is fundamental.
This calls for development of a comprehensive roadmap for green recovery, both prioritizing short term goals to cope with the crisis, as well as a long term economic, social and environmental sustainability vision to build national resilience. Before developing the road map, we need to also compare and analyze other such recovery packages around the world, including the EU green deal.
Event Focus and Objectives
The webinar aims to initiate a trialogue by engaging key science and policy experts from Government of India, bilateral/ multilateral organization, EUD experts, academia and think tank/ civil society. The objective is to create a better understanding of their priorities as well as a sharing of best practices, gaps, constraints and recommendations as a first step to develop future roadmap for green recovery.
- How green is the post-COVID government policy of India?
- Short term and long term greening targets of the government
- Key sectors prioritized by the government for greening
- Major achievements towards green recovery in India
- Room for improvements
- What are the challenges (fiscal and monetary policy, technological, human capital, governance and coordination, M&E) and gaps to drive a green economic recovery in India?
- 10 good practices around the globe for green recovery that India can adopt especially from EU Green deal to offer implementable solutions, policy strategies and effective communication approaches for policy makers or conversely, what can the Indian experience on a recovery plan share with the rest of the world? Which of the major achievements discussed previously could be part of a global green recovery?
- What are the low hanging fruits and need to be considered for further policy interventions for green recovery of Indian economy/ what are the “policy priorities”, which could include in the discussion:
- Needs and gaps as identified by the audience
- Key sectors/topics whose transformation will have a strong impact on sustainability as a whole
- “Easy to implement” measures (low hanging fruits) that would provide results with minimal financial/human/capacity needs
- How to integrate Nature Based Solutions and circular economies in the MSME sectors for making the economic recovery more green and inclusive?
- How could EU and India help each other in this context?
Relevant session outputs will be fed into improving the discussion paper, attached below to produce an outcome paper. The participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.