Smart Cities For All

^{Marina Berg, Ambassador of Sweden to Indonesia}

In a Smart City, innovations, digitalisation, and environmental and climate technologies create opportunities for meeting our society's challenges in an efficient and sustainable way. Meeting the urban challenges and improving the quality of life for urban citizens requires an integrated and holistic approach to urban development.

Collaboration in the form of Triple Helix, is a key in making smart city a reality and collaborations create new solutions, where for example waste in one process became a value in another.

Since the mid-1990s, Sweden has managed to combine economic growth with decreasing levels of emissions. Sweden has reduced the dependency on fossil fuels and Sweden is ranked as number one in the SDG Index. This is the product of innovation, cooperation, entrepreneurship, political leadership and legislation and this is the Triple Helix - interactions and collaborations among academia, industry and governments.

The battle against climate change has to accelerate. For the first time, more than half of humanity lives in cities. The rapid urbanisation is exerting pressure of fresh water, waste management and public health. The world's cities occupy just 3 per cent of the Earth's land, but account for 75 per cent of carbon emission and almost 80 per cent of all energy consumption. Solutions are needed for smarter and more sustainable cities, for an inlusive economic growth. The cities should provide a good environment in which people can live without wasting earth's resources.

Sweden is keen on engaging a dialogue and in cooperation with partners around the world, and our cooperation with Indonesia already plays a special role in this end.