While India is facing immense challenges to secure safe drinking water and satisfactory sanitary solutions, Denmark has been a frontrunner in developing smart water solutions at home and around the world for decades.

India’s challenges and the Danish expertise are the basis for a new cooperation to find a way to secure the right solutions for India in the next decades. The newly established Gujarat-Denmark Water Hub is an effort to contribute to solving the province of Gujarat’s water challenges – by a first small step, but with a huge prospect of upscaling later.

- Read more about the Gujarat-Denmark Water Hub

5% of India’s population lives in Gujarat, only 2% of water resources are in the state. To thirds of the state’s dams and reservoirs are either empty or about to dry out. Several areas are facing severe water supply challenges.

Gujarat must act – and has stretched a hand out to Denmark where all aspects of water management has a long-standing tradition. From legislation and government regulation, involvement of private corporations to local water management all the way to the end user.

The signing ceremony of the MoU for the Gujarat-Denmark Water Hub.

The partnership in Gujarat involves among others Danish companies like the water solution company Grundfos and consulting engineers Ramboll, while the Confederation of Danish Industry and State of Green are also partners. The principles of the water hub are based on knowledge sharing between the public and private sectors in both countries.

- Download White Paper: An Integrated Management Approach for Water Security in all Sectors

‘The Gujarat-Denmark Water Hub partnership with an enormous potential both for India and for Denmark. The single point-of-contact for Danish companies with a broader market ambition in India will be of definite value for them,” says Kunal Singla, director of Confederation of Danish Industry in India.

The population in India’s cities is expecte to increase by 400 million people by 2025. They all need water, but the water supply systems are not ready for this and solutions must be found to secure basic living necessities like safe drinking water and sanitary solutions. Water management is a pivotal part of the Indian government’s 100 Smart Cities Mission. 60 cities are part of this, several in the province of Gujarat.