Living Land

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Awarding innovation to combat

desertification and drought

Abdulmalek A. Al Alshaikh, General Secretary, Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water

he Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize

for Water (PSIPW) is a leading scientific award,

offered every two years, that focuses on innovation.

Since its establishment in 2002 by HRH Prince Sultan Bin

Abdulaziz (1930-2011), PSIPW has given recognition to

scientists, researchers and inventors around the world for

pioneering work that addresses the problem of water scar-

city in creative and effective ways.

To this end, PSIPW offers a suite of five prizes, covering the

entire water research landscape. First, there is the Creativity

Prize, worth US$266,000, which is awarded for cutting-

edge interdisciplinary work that can rightly be considered a

breakthrough in any water-related field. Then there are four

specialized prizes, each worth US$133,000: the Surface Water

Prize, the Groundwater Prize, the Alternative Water Resources

Prize, and the Water Management and Protection Prize.

Nominations are evaluated by an international panel of

distinguished scientists who serve on various committees

for each of the five prizes. Nominations undergo a rigorous

three-tiered evaluation process, starting with a preliminary

evaluation committee, followed by a referee committee, and

ending with a final selection committee.

As a prize focusing on water, a number of our winners have

been awarded for work that is directly relevant to the problem

of desertification and water management in arid lands. Their

innovative research has made substantial contributions to our

understanding of desertification and potential ways to combat it.

Predicting drought

In our Sixth Award, given in December of 2014, the

Creativity Prize was awarded to Dr Eric F. Wood and Dr

Justin Sheffield of Princeton University for developing a

state-of-the-art system to accurately monitor, model and

forecast drought on regional, continental and global scales.

Today, virtually every drought monitoring system in the

world uses Wood’s and Sheffield’s approach. Their efforts

have culminated in the recent development of a drought

Image: PSIPW

Eric Wood and Justin Sheffield with the African Flood and Drought Monitor

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