TECO Networking Conference
New Delhi, 16-17 November 2016
The first TECO Networking Conference was held with great success on the 16th and 17th of November 2016, at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
Representatives of public bodies and private companies, researchers, delegates from European Embassies, and high level representatives of istitutional centres participated with the common goal to start up and reinforce collaboration between EU and India in the field of environmental sciences applied to the decontamination of polluted waters and soils.
TECO Team wishes to deeply thank the Embassy of Italy in New Delhi for its enthusiastic support to the event. We are particularly grateful to the Italian vice ambassador in India, honorable Luigi Estero, and to the scientific attaché Massimo Spadoni, former TECO Project Manager, who has always strongly believed in the fruitful scientific collaboration between Italy and India, suggested valuable innovations and fully supported the organization of the whole Conference, giving scientific and diplomatic value to the event.
The Conference has been articulated in six sessions:
Opening Session
TECO Session
Challenge Session
Remediation Technology Session
Nature-based Technology Session
Sensing Technology Session
To have a look of what we discussed please download our summary or the final programme or the book of proceedings
Take a look also to the Conference Photogallery
Opening Session
A wide array of opportunities for partnership activation between EU and India, and several possibilities of economic support to the projects, has been presented, jointly with the tools useful to take advantage of these opportunities.
Four EU Nations, delegates from Norway, Germany, Slovak Republic and France presented their Government’s strategy for collaboration with India and the goals reached until now on bilateral collaboration for science and technology.
The forthcoming launch of a website has been announced; the new tool will be a hub to store and share ideas, projects, results and opportunities in the frame of the collaboration between EU and India.
TECO Session
TECO Team presented one of the main activity of TECO Project: the Mobility Programme. The initiative already supported about 13 projects and it is going to continue the next year with renewed energies and purposes. TECO applicants currently in India to carry out their projects (from Italy, Slovak Republic and France) have joined the Conference and have presented their ongoing activities. Within the approved projects, a wide array of different subjects has been covered, ranging from biology to filmmaking, all of them focusing on the issue of water and soil quality.
Challenge Session
Each of the speakers presented the main challenge faced during their work activity, highlighting problems and solutions. The challenges presented to the audience ranged from the technology transfer from the research to the market, the restoration of degraded lands in India, the problem of facing geogenic contamination, the improvement of the policy and regulation framework on contaminated sites, to the request of adequate responses to growing needs of environmental protection and sustainable development in Indian regions.
Remediation Technology Session
The lecturers from the public and the private sector presented leading-edge technologies elaborated to face water and soil pollution. The presentations also highlighted some of the main problems and impediments to an effective remediation of the polluted sites, the lack of remediation standards and the low awareness of the population. About this last point, the information dissemination on both the risks linked to pollution and the strategies for decontamination is a fundamental starting point for every remediation action.
Nature-based Technology
During the session, different approaches were stressed: trees, wetland plants and biochar as a tool to remediate freshwaters and soils; lakes, ponds and check dams to mitigate saltwater intrusion; ostracods for the evaluation of anthropogenic impacts. All of the proposed solutions provide sustainable, cost-effective, multi-purpose and flexible alternatives for a wide array of objectives, individuating smart, 'engineered' ways to face different kinds of contamination.
Sensing Technology Session
Closing Session
A rich and constructive discussion closed the conference, helping the TECO Team to individuate new goals to further improve the positive experience of the first two years of the TECO Project. The main issues of discussion have been: 1) The importance of the participation of students (from school and University) in such events, 2) The opportunity for a further involvement of policy-makers into the networking platform, 3) The invitation to propose to the European Commission the publishing of new calls focused on the networking and communication issue.
TECO project is co-funded by the European Union
