Innovative partnership to protect shared water resources in India

Carlsberg Group enters into partnership with Desolenator to create clean drinking water for a town of 4,000 in the Sundarbans in West Bengal, India.

While around 70% of the world’s surface is covered in water, only 1% of that is accessible, fresh drinking water. Danish brewer, Carlsberg is committed to creating community partnerships that go beyond reducing water use at its breweries to help safeguard shared water resources around them. And through an assessment with WWF, using its Water Risk Filter, Carlsberg identified its highest-priority sites and the water basins that they draw from. Including all seven of its Indian breweries.

The Sundarbans, West Bengal, around 120 km from Carlsberg’s Kolkata brewery, and home to around 4.7 million people, is at a critical point. An area surrounded by salt water, suffering the immediate consequences of rising sea levels. Climate change causes changing weather patterns and more extreme events. In 2020, Cyclone Amphan swept through West Bengal, causing devastation in an area already hard-hit by the pandemic.

Desolenator’s sustainable water purification system is 100% solar-powered, harvesting thermal and electrical energy to distil water. This allows it to create high-quality water from the most complex sources, delivering transformative impact for communities without damaging the environment.

Key to the project’s success is to understand how people will access the water created. A community-led distribution model is being designed through a global, multidisciplinary partnership including the local expertise of NGOs WaterAid and the Sundarbans Social Development Centre, leading researchers from Strathclyde University in the UK, and grant support from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. Tailored to the lives and needs of the people of South 24 Pargana’s district, the distribution model will create employment for female micro-entrepreneurs, empowering people and families within the community.

This transformative approach enables the long-term supply of clean drinking water, setting the foundation for all other development goals to thrive – health, education, income generation and rural female empowerment.

Source: Carlsberg Group