At the recently held second Tourism Working Group meeting at Siliguri, the G20 countries unanimously adopted 'Green Tourism' to be the most important priority for all the participating countries.

Green Tourism envisages tourists spots to be plastic free, pollution free and promotion of visit to natural areas, minimising environmental impacts and conserving environment while improving the well-being of the local people.

Addressing reporters about the outcome of the second Tourism Working Group meeting held from 1 April to 4 April, Tourism secretary Arvind Singh said, "All the participating countries unanimously adopted Green Tourism to be the most important priority."

He added that G20 member countries, invitee countries and international organizations such as UNEP, ILO and UNWTO shared their comments on the first draft of Goa Roadmap.

The Goa Roadmap will be adopted during the Tourism ministerial meeting at Goa, in June 2023.

The working group meeting was attended by 56 delegates from 17 member countries, 8 invitee countries and 4 international organizations.

The event in Siliguri was also graced by the presence of Ambassadors of seven G20 countries — Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, Singapore, Mexico, Indonesia and Korea.

Singh added that during the first session of the Tourism Working Group meeting, presentations were made by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on ‘Travel for LiFE’ and by United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) on ‘1st Draft Outcome Document — Goa Roadmap’.

Presentations were also made by Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Indonesia and Italy on five priorities — green tourism, digitalization, skills, tourism MSMEs, destination management respectively.

The Tourism secretary concluded the briefings with the comments that the discussions during the first two Tourism Working Group meetings are progressing in the right direction.

The drafting of the final Goa Communique will be concluded at the Tourism ministerial meeting to be held in June at Goa.

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