India-Nordic Summit

In News: Prime Minister of India participated in the 2nd India-Nordic Summit on May 04, 2022

• The summit is being hosted by Denmark
• Prime Ministers of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway have also participated in the summit.

Background

• The 1st India-Nordic Summit took place in 2018 in Stockholm
• The 2018 India-Nordic Summit reiterated the six countries’ commitment to global security, economic growth, innovation and climate change.

Key Discussions

• It primarily focused on post-pandemic economic recovery, climate change, renewable energy and the evolving global security scenario.
• The issue of Indo-Pacific too was discussed at the meeting
• The Prime Minister also held separate bilateral meetings with his counterparts of nordic countries
• With Finland the discussion focused on to expand cooperation in the fields of new and emerging technologies like AI, quantum computing, future mobile technologies, clean technologies and smart grids
• With Norway the discussion was to deepen engagement in areas like blue economy, renewable energy, and green hydrogen, solar and wind projects, green shipping, fisheries, water management, rainwater harvesting, space cooperation, long-term infrastructure investment, health and culture.
• Both Indian and Sweden PMs expressed satisfaction at the progress made by the Lead IT initiative.
• This was a India-Sweden joint global initiative to set up a Leadership Group on Industry Transition (LeadIT) in September 2019 at the UN Climate Action Summit to help guide the world’s heaviest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting industries towards the low-carbon economy. Its membership has now grown to 35 with 16 countries and 19 companies
• With Iceland leaders discussed ways to further strengthen economic cooperation, especially in the sectors of geothermal energy, blue economy, Arctic, renewable energy, fisheries, food processing, education including digital universities, and culture

About Nordic Countries

• The Nordic Countries are a group of countries in northern Europe.
• There are 5 Nordic countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland.
• Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are constitutional monarchies and parliamentary democracies. Finland and Iceland are democratic republics.

Importance of Nordic Countries to India

• Nordic countries collectively represent an economy of more than $1.6 trillion.
• Total bilateral trade in goods and services between India and the Nordic countries is $13 billion.
• All these countries figure among the top achievers in several areas of human endeavour, particularly innovation, clean energy, green technologies, and education.

Importance of India to Nordic Countries

• India is the third-largest global economy at $9 trillion in purchasing power parity terms.
• It is also the fastest-growing major economy with annual GDP growth of 7.4% in 2022-23.
• India presents an ideal opportunity to these countries because of its large market as also its youth dividend.
• Maintaining peace, ensuring security and promoting sustainable economic development of the Arctic Region is another area which presents immense possibilities to strengthen the bilateral partnership.

Significance of Nordic Summit for India

• The significance of the event for India can be accessed from the fact that the US is the only other country with which the Nordic states have an engagement at the summit level.
• India Nordic Summit helps in expanding India’s multifaceted cooperation with the Nordic region.

Nordic countries are important partners for India in sustainability, renewable energy, digitisation and innovation. These present enormous opportunities for India to plug into the strengths of these countries to mutual benefit.

Source: The Hindu