G20-Chief Science Advisers Roundtable (G20-CSAR) Organised by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor

The planning meeting of the G20-Chief Science Advisers Roundtable (G20-CSAR) was held on Friday, January 20, 2023, in online mode, to discuss the agenda topics and planning for the proposed high-level roundtables.

Dr (Mrs) Parvinder Maini, Scientific Secretary at the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, chaired the meeting. Senior officials representing Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands (invitee country), Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States participated and provided their comments & suggestions on the topics of mutual interest for this initiative.

One Health, Open Access to Scholarly Scientific Knowledge, Emerging Technologies, and Scientific Data Sharing are indicative sets of agenda topics for G20-CSAR that emerged during the discussion.

G20-CSAR is a government-to-government level initiative conceptualised through India’s G20-Presidency. The motivation of this initiative is to bring together the Chief Science Advisers and their equivalents of G20 member countries, as well as the invited countries, to deliberate upon and develop collaborative frameworks for some of the common pressing global science and technology (S&T) policy issues. This initiative will also help in establishing an effective and coherent global science advice mechanism.

(Representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States)

These G20-CSA roundtables will be an effective platform to discuss and achieve solutions to some of the long pending as well as anticipated issues related to scientific research, technology development and deployment. The G20-CSAR initiative will complement and cross-feed into other working groups and initiatives under the larger G20 framework.

(Representatives from European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, and United Kingdom)

“By convening G20 Chief Science Advisers Roundtable, we would like to achieve an effective institutional arrangement to discuss global S&T policy issues which can evolve into an effective and coherent global science advice mechanism; and solutions to some, if not all, of the transboundary issues faced by the global S&T ecosystem.,” highlighted Dr Parvinder Maini, Scientific Secretary at the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, in the meeting.

(Representatives from Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, and Korea)

During India’s G20 presidency, two high-level G20-CSAR meetings will be organised – the 1^st G20-CSAR during 26-28 March 2023 at Hyderabad and the 2^nd G20-CSAR during 27-29 Aug 2023 at Bengaluru.