ASPIRE Research Institute for Food Security in the Drylands

Food Security in the Drylands

Drylands make up 41 % of Earth’s total land surface and are home to around one third of the world’s inhabitants. These numbers are likely to increase in the future, as population growth occurs at higher rates in drylands compared with all other ecological zones on Earth, and climate change is predicted to aggravate water scarcity in many parts of the world. Sound strategies by which the productivity, sustainability and safety of food supply systems in arid and semi-arid regions can be increased are of paramount relevance to global food security and political stability.

Food security in the hyper-arid desert environments of the Arabian Peninsula depends to a great extent on the current and future availability of food for import. It is likely that world food markets will become increasingly volatile under the impact of future climate change and scarcity of natural resources. This is also going to impact the nutritional quality of the food and ultimately on the health status of the populations. In a public health context, it is urgent to enhance the availability of nutritious food as well as understand and influence the consumers eating habits to prevent for a further increase of the prevalence of chronic diseases. ​

Enabling national food and agricultural sectors to cushion the blows of world food market price surges in times of crisis has thus become a major strategic goal of many countries with a high dependency on food imports, including the UAE. However, conventional agricultural food production in many parts of the Gulf Region is challenged by water scarcity and rather unfavorable climatic and soil conditions. In the past, the introduction and expansion of agricultural production systems not ideally suitable for such environmental conditions has caused groundwater depletion, pollution and soil degradation in vast areas of the drylands worldwide, often aggravating rather than alleviating food insecurity on the long run. There is an immediate need for development and evaluation of diverse alternative strategies specifically tailored to provide food security to the world’s drylands. The ARIFSID provides a highly interdisciplinary research platform that addresses the complex agro-ecological and socio-economic tasks related to this. ​