Rising food prices, coupled with water shortage issues, have created a problem across the Middle East region that a group of experts hopes to solve.
The Atlantic Council’s N-7 Initiative hosted a conference in the UAE this week aimed at promoting cooperation between Israel and the Arab world in order to find outcomes that serve a wider community of people.
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The N-7 initiative seeks to find solutions for food and water security in the Middle East. (Courtesy: Initiative N7.) (Initiative N7)
“Our goal is to produce innovative regional solutions to the shared challenges of climate change, water scarcity and food insecurity,” Oren Eisner, president of the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation, said in a statement.
Event organizers said government experts, civil society participants and private sector members produced actionable articles aimed at positively impacting civilian lives across the region.
The gathering of representatives from 10 Muslim-majority countries, Israel and the United States comes in the wake of the Abraham Accords. This series of normalization deals between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain has since opened the door to economic and security cooperation.
Amid heightened tension across the Middle East due to Israeli-Palestinian incidents as well as developments in Iran’s nuclear program, much of the government’s focus remained on security stability.
A view of a plantation and the Jerash stream which flows into King Talal Dam near Jerash.
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“Moments of tension sometimes lead governments to act with caution,” former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro, director of the N7 initiative, explained to Fox News. “What is noteworthy about the N7 Conference is that despite these tensions, the participants from Israel and a dozen Arab states were not only willing but eager to come to Abu Dhabi to meet.”
As a result of the conversations in the UAE, Shapiro said the participants showed interest in deploying Israeli water technology on a large scale across the Middle East, which could address food insecurity through collective action.
“Above all, they want to pool their knowledge and expertise and apply these solutions together, as N7 regional partners,” said Shapiro.
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