India and Sweden on Tuesday joined hands to combat air pollution and climate change and deliberated on various technological solutions to reduce industrial emissions.
India''s Principal Scientific Advisor V K Raghavan and officials from the Ministries of Environment, Agriculture and Renewable Energy discussed these issues with the visiting Swedish delegation headed by King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf.
Gustaf spoke of the importance to work on improving the quality of forests and acknowledged that the discussion at the roundtable made him feel positive that many different stakeholders are committed to working on conservation and climate change.
"Today, we looked at solutions for air pollution. There are three different components that the government is addressing. One is attitude change in our industries and institutions so that they emit less pollution-causing materials. The second is whatever pollutants there are, we try to measure what is happening everywhere. Sensors are very important. Thirdly, this information needs to be given to decision-making systems," Raghavan said.
Sweden's Minister of Business, Innovation and Enterprise Ibrahim Baylan, said, "Air pollution and climate change are essentially two sides of the same coin.
Now we have a global climate accord and in most of the countries vibrant debates are taking place about how to promote a more sustainable development. We have to do everything we can across all sectors."He said Sweden is working towards innovation in making carbon-free steel and carbon-neutral cement by 2030.Talking about waste management, Baylan said Sweden recycles 99 per cent of its waste and even imports it.
"You have to be very pragmatic about it. Sweden used to be heavily oil-dependent earlier but by using waste as resources, we are now importing waste from countries like Italy, Great Britain and Norway," he said.
Swedish company Bioendev has launched its first pilot project ''Agri-waste to Biocoal'' plant in Punjab where it aims to combat crop-residue waste problem by converting stubble into ''bio-coal," said John Berggren, CEO, Bioendev.