Conference: Managing Water Resources in Arid Agriculture - Exploring Strategies in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia

The Abraham Accords are a groundbreaking series of agreements that normalized relationships between Israel and several other countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and Kazakhstan. Science is specifically noted in the Abraham Accords as an important foundation to bring nations together. This award supports the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to organize a workshop to advance discussions on how to leverage science and technology innovations to address water scarcity issues affecting agricultural production in the region’s arid and semi-arid environments. This workshop brings subject matter experts together from across Abraham Accords nations, the United States, and other countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. It will enhance U.S. capability in water scarcity issues for agriculture – a key challenge domestically – by developing key strategies and solutions that could lead to greater food security and spur economic growth. The workshop is aligned with the Accords aim to establish diplomatic, economic, and security cooperation between Israel and participating countries, and will explore solutions to enhancing the sustainable use of water resources for more resilient approaches to arid agriculture while creating strategic partnerships to enable scientific and engineering innovations. This award supports NASEM to organize and facilitate a 2-day workshop on arid agriculture and water resources to be held in Rabat, Morocco due to its central location for participants from Israel, Morocco, UAE, and Bahrain. The workshop brings together experts from national government agencies, academia, and the private sector (e.g., industry, water utilities, startups, venture capitalists). Critically important topics to be covered in the workshop include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science approaches that can leverage existing technologies to reduce water use, improve the performance of water reuse and desalination, and support better results for arid agriculture (e.g., enhance soil health, increase crop yields, enhance drought resiliency). Outcomes of the workshop include building strategic partnerships among U.S. science and engineering researchers and those in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia; building knowledge and bridging knowledge gaps throughout the region; and exploring innovative science and engineering technologies to benefit the U.S. research community, other global science and engineering communities, and farmers and water managers. The results from the activities will be posted on the National Academies website (www.nas.edu). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.