Desert flora and fauna (image by Ricardo Ojeda)
The Need
Global change in the 21st century will strongly impact arid lands and the people who live in them in ways that are vitally important, but not always well understood. Understanding the nature, scope, timing, and impacts of change will be critical to the nature and quality of life in arid lands. The sustainable development of arid lands will be vital to relieving population pressures and poverty in many regions around the globe. Sustainable dryland urban development is likely to be a key element of any solution to the problems of poverty, human population growth and the environmental degradation of arid lands. Yet, according to the U.N. Millennium Assessment’s Desertification Synthesis, little is known about the urban-dryland interface.
It is this critical need for new knowledge to address environmentally sustainable economic development of drylands through urbanization strategies that motivated the establishment of the Global Collaboratory by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of its founding members, effective July 2, 2007.
Mission
The members of the Global Collaboratory for Drylands and the City work together to conduct scientific, engineering, and policy research to address the problems of sustainable living, economic and social development of arid lands. By combining resources and by working together across the drylands of our planet Earth, it is our goal to make our research enterprise more effective and efficient than six institutions working individually.
As a collaboratory, we conduct scientific research to better understand the hydrological, ecological and atmospheric phenomena characteristic of dryland environments. We work to better understand the phenomena of climate change, population growth, urbanization, and other human impacts on drylands. We develop and demonstrate engineering and technological approaches to better manage those impacts. We support social science research to better understand the human and societal dimension of living on drylands. Based on scientific, engineering and social science R&D, we develop policy alternatives for achieving sustainable living on drylands.
In addition to our common interests in the topical areas of drylands and the city, the members of the collaboratory share a mutual interest in removing barriers to effective international collaboration for research and development. We support the improvement of national and international policies and programs to promote best practices in research administration and management. We recognize a need for work across national boundaries in program funding, management, and accountability that maximizes the efficiencies and synergies of global collaboration for the solution of global problems. We will work to encourage corresponding and enabling steps by research sponsors worldwide.