Stakeholders from the Indian water industry, Nordic countries and Europe came together for the first-ever SPRING Water Summit on March 9-10, 2023 in New Delhi. The summit was organised by Indo Nordic Water Forum and Finnish Water Forum.

Indo Nordic Water Forum (INWF) is a not-for-profit trust registered in India and an offshoot of the Indo-EU SPRING project. Finnish Water Forum encourages its members to find solutions for global water challenges, through Finnish know-how and technology.

The SPRING project is one of the seven Horizon 2020 projects that received funding from the Government of India and the European Commission. The project aims at developing cost-effective bio-remediation technologies for the removal of organic micro-pollutants present in groundwater and surface water.

Innovation also revolves around developing novel microbial technology for water quality monitoring methods. Real-time detection systems to highlight different pollutants risks and flooding/water insufficiency scenarios will also be developed. Field trials of prototype technology will be carried out in urban and rural areas. The project covers two important river basins of India – Ganga and Godavari. One of the deliverables of the project was to establish an entity in India and frame the post-project viability of the research.

The lineup of speakers at the summit included Sh Bharat Lal, Director General of the National Centre for Good Governance and the first Director of Jal Jeevan Mission who also gave the keynote address. Ambassador of Finland H.E. Ms Ritva Koukku-Ronde and Ambassador of Norway H. E. Mr Hans Jakob Frydenlund also spoke on the occasion.

Ms Kamilla Kristensen Rai of the EU delegation talked about the collaboration between India and the European Union in the area of water, under the Indo-EU Water Partnership.

Representatives of various Indian and European water companies like Tata Cleantech Capital, Nokia, Abloy and Vishvaraj Enviro gave presentations.

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