The two days Negev Forum summit was held in Abu Dhabi and brought together Israel and Arab states.
Kaufman Pess, Director General of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Israel has presented a proposal for four strategic core areas for the stability of food systems and water technologies in the region, on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Water Authority at the Negev Forum.
The two days Negev Forum summit was held in Abu Dhabi, and brought together Israel and Arab states, with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt and the United States.
Na’ama Kaufman Pess, Director General, in partnership with her Moroccan counterpart, has spearheaded the discussions on food security and water technologies. The Israeli delegation has, for the first time, presented a series of proposals for cooperation and applied projects at the local and regional level, based upon the perception that the countries of the region share similar challenges and that Israel has broad knowledge that it can share with the other countries of the region. Solving common challenges will lead to the prosperity of all the members of the Forum, including overcoming diseases and pests that know no borders. This summit is the professional meeting of the multi-country work teams and is a continuation of the Negev Forum held in March 2022 all the members of the forum participate in it, including Israel, the USA, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt.
The selected fields represent significant challenges to local and regional food security against the backdrop of the climate crisis and include concrete proposals with the aim of establishing a regional platform for optimal coordination of joint actions to deal with them. From the four proposals, two fields of action are expected to be chosen for which concrete and in-depth work plans will be formulated. The plans will be approved within a few months at the annual Ministerial Summit of the Negev Forum and, in the process, will become the first work products of the historic forum.
The Negev Forum was established by former Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to deepen and expand regional cooperation under the Abraham Accords. It first met in Sde Boker, a small village and conference centre in the south of Israel where the country’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion lived his last years.