As a follow-up to the establishment of the South Asia Regional Office of Future Earth, and to formalize the regional office in the global context, two meetings were held with Dr. Paul Shirvastava, Former Executive Director, Future Earth Global Secretariat, during his visit to India. The first of these was held at the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) at Prithvi Bhavan, New Delhi, India, on November 8 2016. This was attended by the Secretary, MoES; Chair and members of the Future Earth National Committee; Executive Director of the South Asia regional office (Prof. Satheesh) and the senior executives of MoES. Dr. Paul Shrivastava provided a concise account of the Future Earth programme, its mandates, its distributed structure and the current status and the expectations from the regional office in its capacity as a link between science and policy for societal applications and sustainability. In the discussions that followed, Dr. M. Rajeevan, Secretary, MoES, highlighted the activities of the ministry relevant to Future Earth objectives and assured strong support to the program.