Amb. Svane stresses on crucial points: Water, Women, and the World
Denmark and India have identified 10 innovations to work on water issues faced in India and globally under a collaboration led by the Government agencies of the two countries.
The 10 innovations would play a crucial role in solving water issues and many such innovation collaborations should be taken up through partnership between the two countries to address a wide range of issues, Freddy Svane, Denmark’s Ambassador in New Delhi, said on signing of a Statement of Intent (SoI) for the Embassy of Denmark with Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) of India’s premier policy think tank NITI Aayog.
The purpose of SoI is to jointly work towards promoting innovation and entrepreneurship amongst the aspiring entrepreneurs. The partnership would be executed through Innovation Center Denmark (ICDK) under the aegis of Embassy of Denmark, NITI Aayog said in a release on 12 April 2021.
“Water is a substance that cannot be replaced and we need to use all kinds of innovative thinking to make use of it so that the future generations do not face a lot of water challenges as compared to current scenario,” said Amb. Svane.
The ambassador stressed on three key and crucial points: Water, Women, and the World.
“Water is the stream of life, hence its importance for present and future generations cannot be stressed enough. Women empowerment is key to the growth of a nation and to the sustainability goals of the World. If we do not solve water management and challenges issue, regardless of the location, it will impact lives across the world,” said the envoy.
The two countries’ agencies will collaborate and work towards world class innovative solutions addressing water challenges and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of Indo-Danish bilateral Green strategic partnership.
With this partnership, India is all set to take a giant leap towards building a world class innovation ecosystem.
Under this partnership, Innovation Center Denmark in India will collaborate with AIM to support various current and future initiatives of AIM, NITI Aayog and its beneficiaries in India as well as develop global innovation Green economy partnerships addressing SDG goals.
Vice Chairman NITI Aayog Dr Rajiv Kumar underlined, “I look forward to this collaboration very much and I hope that whatever we do, we will also focus on water use in agriculture that takes up to 92 percent of the water. I hope with this collaboration we can bring something very innovative in this field as well besides the others.”
The partnership holds great potential, added NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant while sharing his thoughts on the occasion.
“For impactful innovation across multiple sectors, this partnership upholds a great potential. Through such global collaborations we can align research and development efforts to achieve results in an accelerated manner even in these challenging times,” asserted Kant.
In his address, AIM Mission Director R Ramanan elaborated, “This is a very comprehensive collaboration of all our initiatives and particularly focusing on SDG goals and how the SDG goals can be translated into products that can be rolled out to global markets.
“Our recently launched water challenge with Innovation Center Denmark (ICDK) and the Denmark Technical University (DTU) was also great success and has resulted in a strong relationship with Denmark.”
The 10 innovation teams identified in the challenge are being provided support to develop their products through partners onboarded specifically for the purpose. The Indian teams along with their peers from five countries will now participate in the global finals to be held in May 2021.
The collaboration between AIM and ICDK, Embassy of Denmark, to India would enable both parties to take up more such innovation challenges.
Meanwhile, as part of the SoI, The collaboration between AIM and Embassy of Denmark in India will help Indian innovators access Danish technical expertise and allow Danish Innovators to work on India specific solutions.
AIM-ICDK will also explore various areas of collaboration such as AIM-Denmark school students innovation exchange and co-innovation development, hosting Indo-Denmark innovation challenges, facilitating startup-incubator collaborations and exchanges. Along with these approaches, it will promote startup and entrepreneurship events and competitions through the networks and channels of both parties, said NITI Aayog.
AIM and ICDK have previously collaborated to host AIM-ICDK Water challenge and the SoI between the two would pave the way for such future collaborations that allow innovation exchanges between two countries. #innovations #technology #investment #water #research /fiinews.com
