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18 October 2007
Middle East Cooperation Program Mixes Science, Development Aid
U.S.-funded Arab-Israeli research collaboration is 26-year success
Washington -- Arab and Israeli researchers are collaborating on technical projects that address water resources, pest management, infectious diseases and more, using funding from a U.S. program that has combined science and development assistance in the region for more than 26 years.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded its first grant under the Middle East Regional Cooperation (MERC) program in August 1981. Congress initiated the program after the Israel-Egypt Camp David Accords in 1979.
The program initially was limited to U.S., Israeli and Egyptian cooperation but expanded after the 1991 Madrid Conference -- an effort by the international community to start a peace process through negotiations involving Arab countries and Israel -- to include West Bank/Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia.
“We work with Arab-Israeli cooperation [and development assistance] rather than just development assistance,” MERC Program Manager David O’Brien told USINFO, “but for a program that totals only $5 million a year, we’re getting development results that I think match anything the agency gets out of projects that focus exclusively on development.”
DEVELOPMENT AND COOPERATION
MERC has two primary goals -- promoting research for development and improving cooperation in the region.
USAID manages the program, whose applicants must demonstrate significant levels of direct Arab-Israeli cooperation. U.S. scientists may participate in MERC grants only if their expertise is essential to a specific project and unavailable in the Middle East.
MERC grants are oriented toward research topics that will have a reasonably near-term developmental impact -- economic, environmental, policy and others. MERC grants are for no more than $1 million total funding, usually spread over three, four or five years.
Applicants must submit pre-proposals that an internal committee evaluates. Applications that meet the MERC criteria become full proposals that outside scientists evaluate in what is called a peer-review process.
“We bring together panels that review the applications,” O’Brien said, “mostly for scientific merit, but for other criteria too -- that they’re working on a real development problem, whether there’s a lot of direct cooperation, that they’re building capacity, and the [proposed project] is well managed.”
More proposals are usually accepted than MERC is able to fund, he added, so a joint USAID-State Department committee makes the final decision.
“In 2006, when we tallied it up,” O’Brien said, “we had a record number of ongoing projects -- 40 were active during all or a good portion of that year, up from 11 in 1998.”
Scientists and students visit each other’s countries for training, field studies and workshops. Several students from Arab countries have conducted part of their graduate research in Israel.
SUCCESS ON THE GROUND
MERC projects have produced scientific achievements in many different fields, leading to important, practical development contributions.
One project demonstrated wastewater treatment technology developed by a Palestinian-Israeli-Egyptian MERC partnership in a West Bank village. Nearby villages adopted the technology and similar treatment facilities were built with local and other donor financing. A resource center was built in the West Bank with laboratories for graduate research and to teach technicians to monitor treatment-plant operation.
A partnership involving Israel and six Arab countries developed tomato lines and hybrids that are resistant to tomato yellow leaf curl virus, one of the world’s most costly plant diseases. The MERC scientists tested their resistant plant genes against strains of the virus found in each of the seven Middle East countries. They also shared their resistant plant genes with colleagues in Central America and in western and southern Africa
A Jordanian-Israeli-Palestinian partnership is studying earthquake hazards in the Great Rift Valley, a vast geological feature that runs from northern Syria in Southwest Asia to central Mozambique in East Africa. This complex area, where several plates underlying Earth's crust meet, spawns frequent earthquakes. The project produced maps and charts of seismological data for building codes in Jordan, Israel and the West Bank Gaza.
In the health sector, a Palestinian-Israeli MERC partnership developed a low-cost, efficient way to screen blood donations for hepatitis C, a bloodborne infectious viral disease that in chronic form can cause cirrhosis (liver scarring) and liver cancer. The project also led to routine screening of blood samples being introduced at the largest hospital in Gaza.
Other projects address biodiversity, environmental management, ecosystem restoration, agriculture, coral reef protection, aquaculture and other topics.
Many grantees have gone on to apply together for grants from other donors, O’Brien said, and some have created partnerships to share patent rights that have arisen from their research and development efforts.
“The program has a good story to tell,” O’Brien added, “and it’s really the story of the participants. One of the reasons we’ve gone to smaller grants and pushed [applicants] to get matching funds is to be able to say ‘yes’ to more projects.”
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
