New Delhi: India once again asserted its leadership role in the recently concluded Quad Summit in Japan. The second in-person Quad Summit attended by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan, and US President Joe Biden in Tokyo on May 24 was significant to showcase steadfast commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific that is inclusive and resilient.
The four leaders in a significant move launched new maritime domain awareness initiative, the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), designed to work with regional partners to respond to humanitarian and natural disasters, and combat illegal fishing.
They will continue to pursue a holistic approach to pandemic management by addressing last mile delivery and distribution challenges, augmenting regional health security through cooperation in genomic surveillance and clinical trials, and bolstering global health security architecture, the Quad joint statement said.
A Quad Climate Change Action and Mitigation Package (Q-CHAMP) was announced to strengthen efforts towards green shipping, clean energy, including green hydrogen and climate and disaster resilient infrastructure.
Prime Minister Modi reiterated the importance of assisting countries in the region with their COP26 commitments through mobilisation of climate finance and technology transfer.
In an increasingly digital world with sophisticated cyber threats the Quad members recognised an urgent need to take a collective approach to enhancing cybersecurity.
To deliver on the Quad Leaders' vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, the forum committed to improving the defence of its member nations' critical infrastructure by sharing threat information, identifying and evaluating potential risks in supply chains for digitally enabled products and services, and aligning baseline software security standards for government procurement, leveraging our collective purchasing power to improve the broader software development ecosystem so that all users can benefit.
The Quad partners will coordinate capacity building programmes in the Indo-Pacific region under the Quad Cybersecurity Partnership, and will initiate the first-ever Quad Cybersecurity Day to help individual internet users across the nations, the Indo-Pacific region and beyond to better protect themselves from cyber threats.
As part of ongoing work related to critical and emerging technologies, Quad's Common Statement of Principles on Critical Technology Supply Chains was launched. The four countries will coordinate capacity building programmes for the Indo-Pacific region to bolster critical cyber security infrastructure of the region.
The Prime Minister called for greater Quad collaboration to build trusted global supply chains and spoke of the national framework being adopted in India to create a semiconductor ecosystem in India.
