WE ENVISION AN INDIA...

 

There are emerging issues regarding the transition of Indian economies to biocircularity, including a slow shift of businesses to circularity and to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There are also individual and collective behavioural issues surrounding waste and pollution and an associated lack of monitoring and enforcement of policies for waste treatment and discharge. At the same time, increased population and incomes, unequal financial allocations, social inequities, community exploitation, and insufficient climate risk assessment for integrated policy and financial decisions have led to a lack of production capacity with acceptable bounds on negative externalities. All these factors have led to risks to human health, groundwater contamination, negative impacts on biodiversity and food security, an increase in antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and more non-biodegradable waste in our lands and waters, such as plastic.

 

Biocircular economies offer market-driven support to ensure that onehealth, regenerative agriculture, and ecosystem valuation approaches are resilient and sustainable. We need to strengthen business ventures for climate action and sustainability regarding biocircularity and articulate robust action that addresses economic inequality and environmental degradation through a practical decision framework. Decisions should also be driven by scientific assessment for sustainable development that involves all stakeholders through continuous dialogue. We must adopt technologies to ensure robust implementation and address last-mile vulnerabilities. In particular, if sustainable business models are researched and ground-truthed for the Indian context, they become available for “money with attached metrics” such as Environmental & Social Governance (ESG) and climate impact requirements. These impacts can lead to a market-driven valuation of ecosystems and sustainable redistribution of capital to positivively influence all our chosen topics of interest.