BRICS Tourism Ministers’ Meeting 2022

BRICS Tourism Ministers’ Meeting 2022- Relevance for UPSC Exam

• GS Paper 2: International Relations- Bilateral, regional, and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

BRICS Tourism Ministers’ Meeting 2022 in News

• Recently, Shri G. Kishan Reddy, Union Minister of Tourism, Culture and DONER participated in the Tourism Ministers meeting of the BRICS member countries.

BRICS Tourism Ministers’ Meeting 2022

• Participation: The Tourism Ministers’ of the BRICS countries viz Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa participated in BRICS Tourism Ministers’
• Theme: BRICS Tourism Ministers’ Meeting 2022 adopted the Communique on the theme of Green Growth, Sustainable Development, and Resilient Recovery.
• BRICS Presidency 2022: China took Presidency of the BRICS Council in 2022 from India.
  • During India’s chairmanship of BRICS in 2021 key emphasis was put on sustainability, a shift to renewable resources, job creation, and encouraging green and sustainable tourism practices for accelerating tourism recovery.

India at BRICS Tourism Ministers’ Meeting 2022

• BRICS Alliance for Green Tourism: Indian Tourism Minister stated that India had launched the BRICS Alliance for Green Tourism during the BRICS chairmanship of India in 2021.
• Sustainable Development of Tourism: India also attaches great importance to implementing the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and promoting sustainable development in the tourism sector.
  • This is to address the challenges in environmental protection and climate change, especially in the Tourism sector.
• Indian Approach: India’s approach is to focus on post-COVID growth and development of the tourism sector and priority areas like Cultural Tourism, Adventure tourism, MICE, Medical, Wellness Tourism, and Rural Tourism.
  • To achieve the above, the following major initiatives have been identified-
    • Green Growth and sustainable development
    • Digital Tourism
    • Destination Management
    • Tourism and Hospitality Skill Development & MSME Development.
  • This will also be reflected in India’s SCO Presidency and G20 Presidency in 2022-23.

BRICS Alliance for Green Tourism

• About: BRICS Alliance for Green Tourism promotes measures that can shape a more resilient, sustainable, and inclusive tourism sector.
• Significance: BRICS alliance for Green Tourism can accelerate the recovery and development of tourism on sustainable lines.

About BRICS Grouping 

• About: BRICS is an acronym for the grouping of the world’s leading emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
• Background: In 2001, Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill authored a paper called “Building Better Global Economic BRICs”, pointing out that future GDP growth in the world would come from China, India, Russia, and Brazil.
  • Though the paper did not recommend any formal grouping, it said that BRIC economies combined would outstrip the western dominated world order before 2039.
• BRICS Formation: In 2006, leaders of the BRIC countries met on the margins of a G-8 (now called G-7) summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, and BRIC was formalized that year.
  • Shortly afterward, in September 2006, the group was formalized as BRIC during the 1st BRIC Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, which met on the sidelines of the General Debate of the UN Assembly in New York City.
  • First formal summit: took place in 2009 in the Russian Federation and focused on issues such as reform of the global financial architecture.
  • South Africa was invited to join BRIC in December 2010, after which the group adopted the acronym BRICS.
  • South Africa subsequently attended the Third BRICS Summit in Sanya, China, in 2011.
• BRICS Headquarters: BRICS doesn’t have any headquarter rather all the countries of BRICS have offices dedicated to BRICS in their own nation.
• BRICS Structure: BRICS does not exist in the form of organization, but it is an annual summit between the supreme leaders of five nations.
• BRICS Presidency: The Chairmanship of the forum is rotated annually among the members, in accordance with the acronym B-R-I-C-S.
  • India had the BRICS Presidency from January 2021.
  • Currently, China has the BRICS Presidency.
• BRICS Significance: BRICS Member Countries together represent-
  • 41% of the Global Population
  • 24% of the Global GDP and
  • 16% of the Global Trade

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