Aim & Objective
The Food and Water Security research area at the CSD aims at achieving greater food self-sufficiency in Qatar while
preserving the rare natural resources. Major challenges, such as limited arable lands, poor soil structure,
prolonged hot season, and limited water resources, are addressed to achieve this goal. Both conventional and
unconventional agricultural inputs including organic wastes and treated wastewater are assessed in their use to
promote sustainable crop production. In addition, sustainable agricultural techniques at the field- and
greenhouse-scale are adopted to cope with the adverse pedo-climatic conditions that prevail in Qatar.
As for the Waste management pillar, it focusses on several interdisciplinary scientific approaches to the handling
of several fractions of solid waste and to the preservation of our natural environment, following the
“cradle-to-cradle” reasoning and way of thinking and adopting –where possible- a “zero waste” strategy. The vision
is to replace the use of the linear economy model of “take-make-dispose” with that of the “reuse and circular
economy”.
Program Action Plan
From the Food and Water security perspective, there are two main actions that are envisaged to simultaneously ensure
crop production and groundwater preservation in the most sustainable ways. Animal fresh fodder production at open
fields uses organic residues to improve poor soil properties at reduced costs while preserving scarce groundwater
resources. The cultivation trials at the greenhouse focus on improving vegetable crop production using various
sustainable techniques such as nano-biofertilizers to help achieve the national goal of 70% self-sufficiency in
vegetables.
From the Waste Management perspective, the program aims at key areas of research and expertise that include (but are
not restricted) to: plastic waste (sorting, recovery and recycling techniques), marine litter (material flow
analysis and degradation-fragmentation mechanisms), and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) with a
focus on the recovery of valuable materials, critical metals and rare earth elements (REE).