India

The Indian economy is one of the fastest-growing in the world, but after recording GDP growth of around 7-8 percent for several years, there has been a comparative slowdown. India also faces acute environmental challenges — climate variability, poor air quality, over-exploitation of resources – that have also adversely affected productivity and economic performance, resulting in increased poverty, unemployment and poor health.

India has worked to tackle this through several policies and programmes, making efforts to support achievement of the SDGs and its NDCs. Specific to green economy, India has embraced a large-scale, integrated economy-wide approach, including circular economy and sustainable consumption and production. Aimed at enhancing existing initiatives on a national and sub-national level, India joined PAGE in 2018, with the country’s efforts to increase resource efficiency providing a specific entry point for PAGE support. 

Recent estimates suggest recovery of Indian economy with real GDP expansion of 9.2 per cent in 2021-22 after contracting in 2020-21 (India’s Economic Survey 2021-22). However, to sustain the economic recovery and growth there is a need to develop a transformative, integrated, and all-inclusive roadmap for embedding solutions and principles of inclusive, green economic growth in planning, programming and decision making across different sectors of the economy, development, and environment protection.