Sweden, Finland Find Ways to Rescue India from its Air Pollution

Sweden is working at developing a new technology to rescue India from the growing air pollution, especially that which is caused by stubble-burning in parts of North India. In a panel discussion at New Delhi on 'India-Nordic Partnership: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Gautam Bhattacharyya, Deputy Head of Mission at Swedish Embassy in New Delhi said "Delhi has seen this problem of air pollution and smog and the air quality gets worse around November. And, stubble-burning has been a major issue. So, we are looking into ways to bring an innovative technology to address this issue."

Envoys of Finland, Iceland and Denmark, and the deputy mission of Norway were also present at the discussion.

According to the Swedish diplomat, Sweden had talks with the Department of Science and Technology of India to work on the innovation.

"The idea essentially seeks to transform those burning fields (stubble) into bio coal. We want to see if this idea can be scalable," he said.

Nina Vaskunlahti, the Ambassador of Finland to India, also said that Finland had innovative solutions to offer in the matter like converting rice paddy to fiber that can later be used for making clothes.

"In fact, on green technology, a Finland-based company is running a pilot project in Delhi and will soon expand to another city," she said at the panel discussion.

She mentioned that the project involves Fortum, a leading clean-energy company which is working on charging point technology here.

"It will start another pilot in Hyderabad soon," she added.

The links between India and Denmark that go back to the 17th century was also spoken of by Peter Taksoe-Jensen, Ambassador of Denmark to India. He said "After 2011, our bilateral ties are again back on track and we want to build on our partnership. We want to do more than we have done in other Asian countries like Vietnam or China."

Danish envoy said regarding the Nordic-India ties that, "As Nordic countries, we are also competitors, but we have to work in such a way that we can build a relationship together with India. We need to do more".

On Danish companies' investments in India, he said, "There are issues and challenges. We do not want a situation where companies end up wasting time in India. So we need to take the first step before we can move on to the next one".

Thorir Ibsen, Ambassador of Iceland to India, reiterated that Iceland's support to India was "unwavering" for permanent membership of the UN Security Council or the NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group).

Deputy Head of Mission at the Norwegian Embassy, Hanne Meldgaard, emphasized the need to care for the environment as India and Nordic countries further build on their ties.

The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi had attended the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm in April and held bilateral meets with Nordic leaders to boost ties.

Source-Medindia