Food Security depends on many factors, but on one above all: water. Water is the only totally indispensable necessity for plants to grow and yield a crop. The supreme value of water resources was the subject of the Water and Food Security Conference, organized on Monday August 10 by the Kuwaiti Pavilion in Expo Milano 2015 in the Main Expo Site Conference Center, with the invaluable collaboration of the Kuwait Fund For Arab Economic Development, an important financial fund based in Kuwait which supports development projects in Arab countries and throughout the world. Moderated by Mazen Ali Ansari (Director of Kuwait’s Pavilion), the conference heard speeches from Abulkareem Sadeq (Kuwait Fund) and Raffaello Benetti (Promos – Chamber of Commerce of the Province of Milan).
The Kuwait Fund, 53 years of international cooperation
The Kuwait Fund For Arab Economic Development was founded in 1961 to sustain development projects in Arab countries, but in 1974 it broadened its scope of action to include the whole world, especially Developing Countries. Single national governments advance their proposals, and then the Kuwait Fund evaluates their viability and economic sustainability. Areas of intervention regard the classic strategic development nodes such as infrastructures, transport, energy, education and naturally agricultural systems. Abulkareem Sadeq emphasized that the greatest challenge faced by development strategies in the next ten years will lie in guaranteeing food security to everyone on the planet. A goal which can be reached via effective support being provided to agricultural development, where the sustainable use of water resources will be an absolutely fundamental factor.
Kuwait’s experience in managing water resources
Kuwait is a nation which has developed important skills in the rational management of water. Being obliged to deal with an arid climate and extremely low water resources, it has created major avant-garde desalination plants and pushed for further water treatment facilities and reuse of waste water. However, while these policies largely succeed in supplying water to the main cities and industries, the country’s agricultural system has to rely on underground water reserves. But these are non-renewable resources which must therefore be used while preserving their bio-capacities for regeneration, explained Abulkareem Sadeq.
Kuwait Fund and companies from Lombardy: a hypothesis for collaboration
Two other experts in the large scale management of water are Metropolitane Milanesi and Cap Gestione, the two long-running Lombard companies who created the 32 ‘water houses’ in Expo Milano 2015. During his speech, Raffaello Benetti highlighted their consolidated experience in the management of the integrated water system of Milan and its Province. As an expert in international business with
Promos – the Special Company for the international activities of the Milan Chamber of Commerce – Benetti expressed great interest in the activities of the Kuwait Fund For Arab Economic Development aimed at supporting agricultural development projects and water management worldwide. He declared his intention to explain the Fund’s projects to Lombardy companies represented by Promos, with the aim of opening new possibilities of collaboration and investment.
