Norway: India’s partner for green growth

1 October 2021

In early June, the Norwegian ambassador to India and a member of the Indian prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council penned an article highlighting the increasing need for India to work closely together with Norway for “a [post-COVID] recovery based on sustainable growth, with the Blue Economy at the centre”. The piece outlined the many initiatives that are already underway between the two countries across the maritime sector, ranging from a Task Force for Blue Economy on Sustainable Development, to an Integrated Ocean Management Initiative, and a Marine Pollution Initiative.

Norway is an understandably attractive partner for India to work within these spheres, given the Scandinavian country's expertise — and influence — across the maritime sector globally. However, this mid-sized European country offers more than just cooperation for developing a 'Blue Economy'. Oslo can also be a useful partner to New Delhi in its quest for sustainable development, given Norway’s competence, capacity and willingness to work together with India in a whole-of-nation approach across government, businesses, and educational institutions, particularly across the energy and maritime sectors. As India embarks on transitioning from fossil fuels to a greener and more renewable energy-based future, closer cooperation with countries like Norway becomes imperative.

Norway — competence and capacity

Despite its relatively small population of 5.3 million, Norway is one of the world’s wealthiest countries with decades of its surplus hydrocarbon revenues sensibly invested through the Government Pension Fund of Norway (GPFG), the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund with assets of over USD 1.2 trillion under management. Yet Norway’s real success lies in the application of its wealth to be a good global citizen: it is a global leader in human development and promoting human rights, with a special focus on gender issues and education for children, climate change performance, and has an active foreign policy approach of promoting peace and reconciliation as a mediator. Norway has consistently advocated for a more gender-balanced approach to peace and security work, where it has outlined a greater need for women’s participation across peace and reconciliation processes, implementation of peace agreements, operations and missions, and humanitarian efforts.

India should continue to work with Norway on global issues of convergence across peace and security, women’s rights, climate change and the role of oceans, especially given both countries are in an agenda-setting position as temporary UNSC members until 2023.

Oslo is also keen to contribute towards global governance and is an important European state outside the 27-member European Union for New Delhi to prioritise. Despite not being a part of the EU, Norway plays an important role as a strategic actor in Europe, given its founding member status in NATO and the Arctic Council. India also finds itself sitting with Norway this year as a fellow non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council until 2023, with Norway emerging with the highest votes across the West European bloc. Oslo has outlined four key areas as its Security Council priorities: peace diplomacy, the inclusion of women, protection of civilians and climate change and security, all of which find considerable overlap with New Delhi’s stated priorities.

Norway is recognised as a global leader in its ocean strategy. While the country recognises the risks posed by climate change, overfishing and pollution to the world's oceans, it remains vocal about the need for oceans to handle ever-increasing consumption volumes. The Norwegian government has, therefore, come up with an ocean strategy titled Blue Opportunities, which focuses on its three priority areas: skills and digitalisation, climate change and green shipping, and value creation, along the entire coastline. Norway aims to ensure that there is a balance of protection and production. Its approach is not of pure charity, but rather sustainable usage, so that future generations can enjoy what present generations currently do. Norway’s pragmatic approach towards maritime opportunities will find congruence in much of the developing world, which remains resistant to calls for ‘sacrificing’ growth.

Norway’s outreach to India

Norway has articulated various avenues for how it desires to further strategic cooperation with India, best exemplified in its Norway-India 2030 strategy document released in 2018. The report identifies India as “an increasingly influential global player and an increasingly important partner for Norway”, noting that “developments in India will have a significant impact on how successful the world is in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and global climate targets”. Norway's prioritisation of adopting a global leadership role in climate policy leads it to strongly support the world's third-largest carbon emitter in transforming its management of industries such as energy, shipping, and fisheries to a ‘greener’ form.

Oslo has identified a number of areas where it can specifically assist India, such as its International Climate and Forest Initiative, which aims to conserve primary forests and reduce emissions from deforestation, and its private maritime companies which can partner with India across new shipping technologies, especially for LNG, and combat marine litter and microplastics. Other areas of cooperation include higher education and research, particularly through the Norway Programme for Research Cooperation with India (“INDNOR”), focusing on the environment, climate change and clean energy.

Indeed, there has been significant political outreach by Oslo to New Delhi. Norwegian Prime Minister Solberg spelt out the importance of India's “massive scale and vast resources” in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during her inaugural address given at the 2019 Raisina Dialogue. Highlighting Norway and India’s shared values and commitment to the rules-based international order, Solberg emphasised the centrality of the oceans to support a world population of ten billion expected by the middle of this century, and underlined Norway’s commitment to work together with India to solve global challenges “in cooperation, rather than in isolation”. This was followed up last year when Norway’s Minister for Climate and Environment highlighted the shared interest of both countries to ensure “integrated ocean management at the government level” while harnessing the private sector to ensure progress is made on both the sustainable use of marine resources, as well as advancing scientific knowledge about oceans.

Delivering tangible results

The various agreements signed between India and Norway are already translating into increased action. In March, the two countries agreed to operationalise the India-Norway Integrated Ocean Initiative signed in 2019 by conducting marine spatial planning with Lakshadweep and Puducherry selected as the first pilot sites. A few weeks ago, the bilateral Task Force on Blue Economy for Sustainable Development met for the fourth time, noting that the Blue Economy partnership has become the “cornerstone of the bilateral cooperation between India and Norway”.

Earlier this year, India’s state-owned refiner Indian Oil Corp set up India’s first green hydrogen plant, with the help of a Norwegian company, Greenstat, exemplifying how Norwegian competencies can help India achieve its energy transition targets, such as its aim for 450 gigawatts capacity of renewable energy by 2030. The IOC and Greenstat tie-up has wide-reaching aims, with a ‘Centre of Excellence on Hydrogen’ to be established that will facilitate technology transfers across industry and R&D platforms. Similarly, India’s shipping ministry signed an MoU with a Norwegian university earlier this year to establish a Maritime Knowledge Cluster, extending from academic research to corporate alliances, with the aim of fostering innovation in the maritime sector.

In some cases, the increased bilateral engagement has already begun to yield investments, with the Norwegian state-owned investment fund, Norfund, recently announcing a USD 100m investment in Fourth Partner Energy, a leading rooftop solar developer in India, which aims to provide 3 gigawatts of installed solar capacity by 2025. This is part of a promising new venture, with Norfund launching a new billion-dollar Climate Investment Fund, which wants to prioritise investments in renewable energy projects in developing countries like India.

Targets for the future

Norway’s ambassador to India has opined that ‘the next blue economy boom will be in the Indian Ocean’, noting that Norway and India are ‘ideal partners in ocean management’, given the strong commitment to international law and norms from both countries. Given that the Blue Economy has been identified by the Indian government as one of its 10 core dimensions of growth by 2030, India needs to deepen its partnership with the architect of Blue Opportunities.

Greater cooperation with Norway should not be restricted to bilateral ties. Rather, New Delhi should also look towards Oslo as a development assistance partner across third countries. India can partner more with Norfund, which is one of the largest investors in agribusiness across Africa. Similarly, Norad, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, is particularly active in countries of interest for New Delhi across South and Southeast Asia. With India allocating close to USD 1 billion for development assistance to countries primarily in its neighbourhood in its FY21/22 budget, it can coordinate more with Norway, one of the world’s largest donor countries, which spent USD 4.2 billion on official development assistance in 2020.

Economic ties between India and Norway require increased attention. Bilateral trade of USD 1.05bn in FY20 makes Norway only India’s 68th largest trading partner. Similarly, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund GPFG, which accounts for one-sixth of global sovereign wealth fund assets, has a relatively small asset allocation towards India — the USD 13.4bn of its equity investments in the country account for only 1 per cent of the fund’s total assets. A greater share of GPFG’s investments in India will help link the two economies closer.

At a broader level, India should continue to work with Norway on global issues of convergence across peace and security, women’s rights, climate change and the role of oceans, especially given both countries are in an agenda-setting position as temporary UNSC members until 2023. Norway’s willingness to partner with India to achieve its SDGs should be met with equal enthusiasm from the South Asian giant. Overall, despite its size, Norway offers India several opportunities ranging from targeted co-operation in the Blue Economy and green energy transition to broader convergences on global governance. Focusing primarily on large partners and ignoring mid-sized countries like Norway may result in New Delhi missing out on partnerships that offer long-term strategic gains thereby ensuring that its growth and development progress in a sustainable manner.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Gokul Sahni is based in Singapore and writes on geopolitics and geoeconomics, with a particular focus on Indian foreign policy. He holds an MSc in International Relations from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and an MBA from the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. All views and opinions expressed are personal. Image credit: Flickr/MEAPhotoGallery.