WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit co-hosted by Ministry of Ayush adopted eco-friendly methods aimed at reducing carbon emissions

The summit was paperless, and all media event and related documents were made available through the online platforms and App (e.g., brochures/flyers, information booklets, conference programme updates etc.). Ministry feels that such initiatives will have a large impact in the long run and initiatives taken for reduction of carbon emissions can be precedence for other such large-scale events.

One of the major thrusts of the summit was to have online presence, thereby reducing the need to travel. In total, there have been 6,046 streams of the Summit online, both live and Video/recordings, significantly reducing the number of participants/travels onsite. This effort paid off, as significant amount of carbon emission was avoided.

The Ministry of Ayush and WHO efforts are aligned to the G20 New Delhi Leaders Declaration, which reiterates commitment to achieve global net zero GHG emissions/carbon neutrality by or around midcentury.

In March 2019, 4th United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-4), adopted a resolution on "Addressing Single-use plastic products pollution” (UNEP/EA.4/R.9), which "encourages Member States to take actions, as appropriate, to promote the identification and development of environmentally friendly alternatives to single-use plastic products, taking into account the full life cycle implications of those alternatives”.

Not only during recently concluded first WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit but other two global events held in April 2022, i.e. groundbreaking ceremony of WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine (GCTM) and the 3-day Global Ayush Investment and Innovation Summit (GAIIS) also saw same commitment of the Ministry.

During those twin events, use of more than 1 lakh plastic bottles, 15000 plastic tags and 50 thousand plastic cutleries was avoided. Furthermore, it was estimated that if the carbon emission scenario is taken into account, it turned out that it succeeded in reducing 1,19,437.5 kg Co2 equivalent emission.