Under India’s G20 Presidency, the 3rd Environment and Climate Sustainable Working Group (ECSWG) meeting began in Mumbai on May 21. The three-day meeting will mainly focus on Blue Economy. The ECSWG meeting began with a side event of mega beach clean-up in Juhu followed by the Ocean 20 Dialogue. Maharashtra Governor Ramesh Bais, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Ashwini Kumar Choubey, and Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde as well as members of delegations from various countries participating in the G-20 meeting participated in the beach cleaning campaign.
The first day of the meeting had three sessions discussing various aspects of the Blue economy. The sessions were held on topics such as, Science Technology & Innovation, Policy, Governance & Partnership, and setting up of the Blue Finance Mechanism. Further, the Ministry of Earth Sciences and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change hosted the ‘Ocean 20 Dialogue’ with a focus on advancing ideas on action for ocean solutions and the environment. Issues related to setting up a policy, government cooperation, and finance system for the ocean economy were deliberated upon during this meeting. Addressing the Ocean 20 dialogue, Secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, M. Ravichandran said that, ‘Ocean 20 Dialogue’ will bring together experts and policymakers from various fields and discuss aspects related to emerging science, technology, innovation, and challenges related to it.”
On the sidelines of the 3rd ECSWG meeting, sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik created beautiful sand art in Juhu to celebrate the collective effort of the G20 countries to protect the coasts and oceans. Earlier, the first meeting of the Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group was held in Bengaluru from February 9 – 11, while the second meeting took place in Gandhinagar.
