Northwestern students launch e-book on water, food security

Students of Northwestern University at Evanston, Illinois (US), and their counterparts in Qatar have launched a collaborative e-book investigating the challenges Qatar faces in ensuring food and water security for the country. The five-chapter e-book is available online in the iTunes store and explores how Qatar, which currently imports over 90% of its food, can become more self-sufficient and sustainable in sourcing food supplies for its growing population.The e-book also tackles water scarcity in its chapters, which are further augmented by audio, video and photographic slide shows. According to the report, water-intensive projects such as large-scale construction make Qatar among the largest consumers of water on the planet. Yet, without desalinisation, Qatar possesses a fresh water supply that would last only 48 hours.“The critical questions about water security the young journalists raise and answer in the e-book is a testament to the power of collaboration and exchange between peers from vastly different backgrounds,” said Dr Everette Dennis, dean and CEO of Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q). “Such exchanges are an important part of being a student on a branch campus of a leading school like Northwestern because they give students from both schools the chance to broaden their perspectives, learn from one another and produce a large-scale journalism project together.”Eight graduate students from Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston visited Doha to work with five NU-Q journalism students on the report. After being divided into four groups of combined Doha and Evanston students, the aspiring journalists were sent to locations across Qatar to do research and build their reports. Three of the four groups focused on the production and consumption of tomato because of its dependence on a large quantity of water and importance in the local cuisine. NU-Q assistant professor Andrew Mills, who led the project with senior associate dean in Qatar Richard Roth and professors Bill Handy and Phil Duff from the US campus, noted that the project in Qatar has served as an effective stepping stone for US students to understand the Middle East better. “There are challenges out there in the world that they wouldn’t have thought of when reporting in Chicago or in DC,” he said.The visiting students and faculty from Medill expressed their appreciation of the culture as well as the opportunity to report in a different environment and on foreign customs. “This international collaboration reinforces the idea that creativity is a universal language. It’s an important lesson that (journalists) should learn,” said Medill student Eric Eckstrom.