Contact Information Kennith Foster, director UA Office of Arid Lands 520-621-7900 kfoster@ag.arizona.edu Jim Chamie, managing director International Arid Lands Consortium 520-621-3024 chamie@ag.arizona.edu Related Links Office of Arid Lands Studies International Arid Lands Consortium

Researchers from the University of Arizona Office of Arid Land Studies (OALS) will lead a land grant university team in helping strengthen agricultural programs in Afghanistan and Jordan as part of a $1 million cooperative agreement.

Funding for “Sustainable Development of Drylands in Asia and Middle East” comes from the United States Agency for International Development, which awarded the funds to the International Arid Lands Consortium (IALC), which is administered through the OALS.

“This award offers an unprecedented opportunity for scientists and researchers from the University of Arizona to make an important contribution in bringing peace and economic stability to those troubled regions,” said Kennith Foster, president of the IALC board of directors and director of the Office of Arid Lands Studies in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The UA will manage the cooperative agreement on behalf of the consortium. Foster said the goal is to support sustainable development, management, conservation and restoration of arid and semiarid lands in Asia and the Near East by sharing expertise and strengthening the capacity of their home institutions to govern the use and conservation of drylands goods and services.

Foster said the program will pursue three interdependent objectives: resource management to improve water and soil resources management and conservation at the farm and community level; capacity building to support human and institutional capacity development in arid lands; and information and technology transfer by applying information technology and biotechnology in support of sustainable agricultural development.

Initial project initiatives will include supply augmentation and wastewater reuse in Jordan. Another principal initiative will support human resource development for food security and agricultural recovery for Afghanistan by Pakistani university faculty and university facilities previously funded by the U.S. government.

Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe, chair of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, announced the award in October at an IALC-sponsored conference in Tucson. The conference brought together scientists from the U. S., the Middle East, and other areas of the world to consider the topic of “Assessing Capabilities of Soil and Water Resources in Drylands: The Role of Information Retrieval and Dissemination Technologies.”

(The International Arid Lands Consortium (IALC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring the problems and solutions unique to arid and semiarid regions. IALC promotes cooperative research and practical application of new knowledge to develop sustainable ecological practices. The member institutions share a mission to enable people of arid lands to improve the quality of life for future generations. IALC members include the University of Arizona; Desert Research Institute, Nevada; The University of Illinois; the Jewish National Fund; New Mexico State University; South Dakota State University; Texas A&M University- Kingsville; the Higher Council for Science & Technology, Jordan; and the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Egypt.)