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Date/Time
Date(s) - 06/10/2025 - 08/10/2025
9:30 am - 6:00 pm

Location
Seminar Hall

Categories


Three Days National Seminar
On
Harmonizing Sustainability: Navigating Circular Economy for Sustainable Growth
(6-8 October, 2025)

Detailed theme-note: In today’s global landscape, the pursuit of sustainability has become paramount. Businesses, governments, and individuals are increasingly recognizing the need to harmonize economic growth with environmental preservation. At the heart of this endeavor lies the concept of the circular economy—a model that aims to minimize waste, maximize resource efficiency, and foster long-term sustainability. Circular economy is a new production and consumption model that ensures sustainable growth over time. With the circular economy, we can drive the optimization of resources, reduce the consumption of raw materials, and recover waste by recycling or giving it a second life as a new product. Our current economic model relies on the conventional linear economy, which follows the pattern of creation, consumption and disposal of products. However, this linear economy is not sustainable. It leads to an increasing pressure on finite resources and generates significant waste, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. The circular economy offers an alternative way. It seeks to extract the maximum value from resources in use and keeps materials in circulation for as long as possible. It aims to minimize the environmental and social impacts, as well as to reduce economical costs and create jobs.

Circular economy prioritizes regenerative resources as material inputs and making the most out of existing resources and materials. It is based on three principles: design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use, regenerate natural systems. Main pillars of action are known as the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

The aim of the circular economy is therefore to make the most of the material resources available to us by applying three basic principles: reduce, reuse and recycle. In this way, the life cycle of products is extended, waste is used and a more efficient and sustainable production model is established over time. The idea arises from imitating nature, where everything has value and everything is used, where waste becomes a new resource. In this way, the balance between progress and sustainability is maintained.

The seminar “Harmonizing Sustainability: Navigating Circular Economy for Sustainable Growth” delves into the intricate relationship between economic development and environmental stewardship. It explores how organizations can navigate the complexities of the circular economy to achieve sustainable growth while minimizing their ecological footprint.

Through insightful discussions, case studies, and expert insights, this seminar aims to:

    • Uncover the Principal of circular economy: Delve into the core principles of the circular economy, including resource efficiency, waste reduction, and closed-loop systems. Adopting a Circular Economy offers a comprehensive and pragmatic approach towards achieving sustainable growth and significant waste reduction. Reimagining and reconfiguring how we produce, consume, and manage resources presents a viable solution to the pressing environmental challenges of our time.
    • Highlight Best Practices: Showcase real-world examples of businesses and industries successfully implementing circular economy strategies to achieve sustainability goals.
    • Addresses challenges and opportunities: Identify key challenges facing the adoption of circular economy practices and explore innovative solutions and opportunities.
    • Promote Collaborations: Encourage collaboration and knowledge-sharing among stakeholders, including businesses, policymakers, academia, and environmental advocates.
    • Empower Action: Provide actionable insights and strategies for participants to integrate circular economy principles into their organizations and communities.

We invite insightful conference paper, case-studies on the following sub-themes:

A. Circular Economy & Resource Efficiency Circular Economy (CE) and Resource Efficiency (RE) are approaches to sustainable economic growth, with increasing traction for both these approaches world-wide. In India, there has been growing momentum at the national level to mainstream RE and CE across different sectors. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget speech shared that the circular economy action plans are ready for 10 out of the 11 sectors. Session aims to discuss the areas where the transition is expected to meet the ends of productivity enhancement, opportunities for new businesses and jobs, and will be supported by active public policies covering regulations, extended produce responsibility framework and innovation facilitation. Given the interconnected nature of global economy, the transition would require collaborative approaches and partnerships will be critical for enabling all stakeholders to move forward.
B. Fast tracking Industry towards an Economically Viable and Just Net Zero Future The world urgently needs to mitigate the effects of climate change, and nations worldwide have committed to achieving Net Zero emissions. However, achieving this ambitious goal requires a significant and universal transformation of the global economy, with an average annual spending of $9.2 trillion on physical assets. Widespread investment in low-carbon technologies and scaling up finance from both public and private sources is necessary. The transformation of the global economy towards Net Zero emissions would drive innovation, sustainable development, and create new economic opportunities. The session aims to explore innovative solutions, required technology and financial support, and policies that can help accelerate this transition. The focus of the discussion will be on how industries can undergo transition towards net-zero emissions while maintaining economic viability and ensuring a just transition. The economic development in the Global South from a long-term perspective is also of increasing importance in the current era of globalization, integration, and convergence. Achieving Net Zero requires collective action from all stakeholders, and the session will facilitate discussions among governments, businesses, and civil society organizations on how to achieve this critical step towards securing a better future for all.
C. Scaling Climate Finance for Emerging Markets The transition to a just and sustainable future requires increased climate finance, particularly in developing economies and the Global South. While there is growing interest in sustainable finance from institutional investors, challenges still exist in accessing capital. Innovative financial instruments and risk-sharing mechanisms can incentivize private investment, and governments and multilateral development banks can provide technical assistance. Standardized frameworks for reporting on the impact of investments will also help increase transparency. The session aims to explore solutions to overcome barriers to accessing sustainable finance, ensuring that financing a just transition remains a key priority, with a focus on social and climate justice. The session will also offer an opportunity to delve into the present status of climate finance flows to emerging markets and the Global South, along with the challenges related to accessing capital that pose hindrances to the advancement of sustainable development. Moreover, the aim is to scrutinize the escalating funding being provided to the Global South and how it can be utilized to support critical initiatives such as climate adaptation and access to low-carbon-technology.
D. Sustainability in Global Value Chains: Ambition and Action Many businesses engage in multinational dealings resulting in a global value chain with SMEs as crucial suppliers. However, businesses are facing increasing pressure from stakeholders such as consumers, regulators, and investors to ramp up their sustainability efforts, leading to a rise in voluntary ESG disclosure frameworks and mandatory regulations like EU-CSRD and Germany’s Value chain Due Diligence Act. Domestically, the top 1,000 listed companies are required to furnish a Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report as part of their annual report by SEBI. Many of these disclosures require businesses to disclose information on their operations including value chains. Addressing their value-chain emissions can significantly improve a business & ESG performance and help in achieving a net-zero value chain with minimal costs. During this session, the evolving global regulatory and scope of sustainability reporting will be discussed in detail and the way forward examined. The discourse shall also consider the impacts of these considerations on businesses and their value chains and steps taken by them to prepare themselves for the same. The session would provide the SMEs an opportunity to share the benefits and challenges encountered while implementing sustainability in their businesses and value chains.
E. Corporates leading Sustainability Sustainability has become increasingly critical for organisations to remain relevant and competitive in today’s world. It entails companies to rethink and make their activities less impactful on the surrounding environment. Introducing new and innovative ways with respect to sustainable practices in their businesses help corporates to operate on a longterm basis ensuring responsible growth. Besides helping the planet, corporates are trying to understand and embrace the challenges faced by communities and making it a part of their sustainability strategy. Such corporates define clear aspirations and goals for sustainability leading to stronger business performance. They actively engage with the wider business ecosystem for sustainable outcomes. The session will focus on how these change-makers are taking responsibility for their foot-print in the world and making a difference by using inspirational models to overcome environmental and social challenges. It will highlight on their journey of innovation and sustainable growth and the positive impact on society.
F. Empowering Indian MSMEs to Drive Climate Action Climate change poses significant challenges for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Climate-related events such as extreme weather events, sea-level rise, and resource scarcity can disrupt business operations, supply chains, and markets. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has developed the CII Climate Action Charter (CCAC) which is intended to provide businesses with a robust tool to measure, monitor, and report their carbon emissions. This tool aids in mapping Climate Change as a material risk across their value chains and to develop long-term actions to build resilience in alignment with both national and global policies designed to combat climate change and its impact. The panel will delve into what clean energy transition would mean for MSMEs as different sectors start to transition, and the impact that it would have on their work-force. Also, enabling a just clean energy transition implies ensuring that MSMEs in current conventional sectors and their workers are equipped with access to technology. They also need to have the right skills and knowledge to ride the wave of the transition and adapt to new demands of the emerging clean energy sectors. Doing this requires an understanding of their current challenges and needs, and support they require to achieve this from skilling agencies, policymakers, OEMs, technology experts, researchers, and philanthropists. This panel brings together stakeholders across the ecosystem to discuss opportunities, interventions and actions needed today to enable a resilient and clean MSME sector and enhance job opportunities for their workers.