Essam Heggy, an internationally renowned Egyptian scientist, says Arab universities are failing to fully serve their societies’ needs because of deficiencies in their funding models and how they are run.
“We need leaders in Arab higher education who can envision the future rather than remain anchored in the past,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with Al-Fanar Media.
Heggy, who is an earth and planetary science researcher at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering and a research affiliate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also called attention to the need for advancements in environmental and space sciences and their applications within the Arab world.
His comments come at a time of growing public debate over the effectiveness of Arab university education and the role of higher education institutions in addressing pressing challenges, particularly in areas like climate change, water scarcity, natural disasters, and technological and monitoring capabilities.
Heggy said too many Arab decision makers thought it was enough for universities to produce graduates who can read, write, and find a job, rather than change society and help their countries meet the challenges they will face.
Calling for changes in the way universities are financed, Heggy said universities must be financially independent and safeguard their staffs from external interference.
“The independence of universities must be the primary objective so they can fulfil their role, free from the constant fluctuations in our Arab world, whether social, political, or otherwise. This can be accomplished through sovereign funds or by encouraging investment and donations, similar to the approach taken in the United States, allowing them to rely not solely on government income.”
Heggy, who served as a scientific advisor to the former Egyptian President Adly Mansour, was born in Libya in 1975 and earned his master’s and doctorate from the University of Paris. He holds dual citizenship in the United States and France, where is also an associate professor at the Earth Research Institute in Paris.
In his conversation with Al-Fanar Media, Heggy touched on numerous topics, including the link between scientific research and political decision-making, the factors driving food price increases in the Arab world, and his latest work on using high-altitude radar imaging to monitor shallow groundwater reservoirs.
Space scientist Essam Heggy focuses on climate change and natural disasters in desert regions, as well as water formation on planets and moons within the solar system. He is part of the scientific teams for multiple NASA and European Space Agency missions, with over 130 research papers on water and climate studies. Heggy earned his master’s and doctorate from the University of Paris and currently holds positions at the University of Southern California and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Water Crisis
The water crisis in the Arab world is “complicated”, Heggy said. “It is often seen solely through the lens of consumption and drinking water, overlooking its essential role in agriculture and ecological balance. As long as water flows easily from our taps and remains affordable, there is a misconception that a water crisis does not exist.”
“When examining agriculture, we see rising food prices in several Arab countries. This increase stems from the scarcity of water resources, which diminishes agricultural output and market supply. Consequently, higher prices result, and crops that aren’t grown locally must be imported using hard currency. This situation contributes to the rise in food prices across all Arab nations.”
Heggy has spent 20 years on NASA projects aimed at discovering water on the moon, Mars, and other planets.
This year, Heggy and a team from the University of Southern California and other research institutions in the United States, Europe, and Qatar developed a prototype of airborne technology for mapping shallow groundwater aquifers. Their findings were published in an article in IEEE Geoscience Remote Sensing Magazine titled “Airborne Sounding Radar for Desert Subsurface Exploration of Aquifers: Desert-SEA: Mission concept study [Space Agencies]”.
Heggy explained that the prototype, dubbed “Desert-SEA”, aims to capture radar images of shallow groundwater from the air, “specifically the water located within the first twenty metres, which is essential for agricultural practices. This water plays a crucial role in maintaining environmental balance, as deeper water is less utilised in agriculture and has a diminished environmental impact.”
The technology has significance for the Arab region, he added. “Groundwater is primarily used for agriculture in our Arab world, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula. It also serves as a vital resource during droughts in countries that depend on rainwater or irrigation for farming, such as Egypt and the Maghreb nations. Therefore, understanding the location and quantity of groundwater is essential for ensuring our food security and the sustainability of our food resources.”
Current water maps are “unrealistic” because they make assumptions based on measurements of groundwater depth in wells, he said. “However, in places without wells, we lack knowledge about groundwater depth. These wells account for only one one-thousandth of the desert area, meaning that existing maps are similarly limited. The rest is largely based on interpolation, which relies on assumptions rather than accurate data.”
For example, “When the depth is measured at one point at, say ten metres, and at another point also at ten metres, it’s assumed that any point in between will be at the same depth. However, the reality is that some points between these two measurements could be much deeper—perhaps a hundred metres or even a thousand metres.”
To obtain more accurate measurements, Heggy said the airborne Desert-SEA system would use a radar mounted on a high-altitude aircraft to map the tops of groundwater reservoirs at depths of about 20 metres. Given that the desert areas of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula are approximately one and a half times the size of the United States, relying solely on wells to map groundwater reservoirs is insufficient. He said the Desert-SEA system would create more precise maps of changes in groundwater availability.
Climate Change Challenges
Heggy also discussed the lessons to be learned from several climate-related natural disasters that have struck Arab countries in recent years.
The catastrophic floods that struck Derna, Libya, in September 2023, killing more than 4,000 people and leaving thousands of others missing, should serve as a wake-up call, he said. Since then, other Arab countries have experienced natural disasters that caught them unprepared.
He mentioned the flooding that struck Sudan this summer, submerging dozens of villages, causing numerous fatalities, and displacing tens of thousands of people, as well as heavy rains and deadly flooding that hit many Arabian Gulf countries in April, and flooding in Morocco and Algeria in September that resulted in at least 20 deaths.
“It’s noteworthy that the most devastating floods in Africa occurred in Libya, the driest country on the continent,” Heggy said. “Additionally, the most significant climate disasters in the Arab world took place within two years that coincided with the World Climate Summits held in Dubai and Sharm El-Sheikh”, COP27 and COP28.
“These paradoxes highlight our lack of understanding of the climate we inhabit and our insufficient response to these risks,” he said.
Heggy said these disasters also emphasised the need for meteorological systems to address climate change.
“It’s paradoxical that in the heart of the Arab desert, you can upload a video to TikTok or Facebook, yet we can’t measure the salinity of water, track changes in soil humidity, or monitor rainfall rates in rural areas. We don’t lack technology; it’s just being invested in the wrong direction,” he said.
“We lack observatories to study these phenomena, and we are not investing in the capabilities needed to support such observatories.”
Heggy said it was a common misconception that climate change would produce rare events, occurring only once every hundred years, leading people to assume that catastrophes like those in Libya or Sudan won’t recur.
“There’s a belief that supernatural forces protect us, as if we are divinely chosen places in the universe, and that’s simply not true. Natural disasters serve as a test for societies, reflecting their understanding of nature and the fragility of sustainability in these regions.”
He also noted a shift in research priorities. “In 2023, as part of re-evaluation plans at Arab universities, climate change academic programmes were closed in favour of artificial intelligence and big data programmes, which align with the region’s geopolitical challenges,” he said. “However, they fail to recognise climate change as a threat, despite the numerous deaths resulting from its effects in places like Libya.”
Heggy criticised Arab higher education leaders and policy makers for viewing climate change as a “luxury” issue. “They believe we live on an island isolated from these changes, so they think it doesn’t concern us. They believe it’s the west’s responsibility to conduct these studies, arguing that the west is to blame for the gases causing global warming, not us.”
Heggy said that many leaders of Arab universities, particularly in the Gulf countries, come from the United States, Europe, East Asia, or other areas outside the Arab environment. “Their simplistic view is that there is no climate change in desert environments—there are no animals or trees, for example—so they believe there’s nothing to study.”
Most of those hired at research universities in the Gulf focus on energy or emissions reduction, he added.
“The evidence is once again what happened in Libya. Numerous studies indicated that the city of Derna was at risk, yet no one paid attention to these warnings. What occurred in Derna mirrors events in the Gulf in 1923, when a catastrophic hurricane resulted in thousands of deaths and the sinking of ships. In Gulf culture, this is referred to as the “year of the drowning”. … History repeats itself, but this time we have societies with millions of people responsible for supplying energy to the world we inhabit.”
Arab Research Contribution
Arab university research into such disasters was noted in a report called “Arab Region Punching above Its Weight for Solar and Wind Energy Research”, which was featured in the 2021 UNESCO Science Report, titled “The Race against Time for Smarter Development.”
The report reveals that from 2016 to 2019, the Arab world contributed significantly to solar and wind energy research, accounting for 7.9 percent of global output in photovoltaic cell research, 7.4 percent in wind turbine technology, 5.1 percent in smart grid technology, 3.4 percent in biofuels and biomass, 3.1 percent in sustainable transportation, 2.2 percent in greater battery efficiency, and 3.3 percent in cleaner fossil fuel technology.
However, Heggy said, “Science in the Arab world is meaningless for one simple reason: it lacks a role. Decisions are not grounded in scientific evidence but are influenced by various other circumstances and factors.”
He added: “There are successful initiatives within Arab universities, some that remain under the radar, and others that were anticipated to achieve greater success.”
He thinks Moroccan universities are the most successful in the Arab world in studying the environment, climate, energy, and space. “Morocco has successfully developed a robust environmental and climate framework, establishing laws and regulations that safeguard the environment from numerous harms. The country has also ventured into sustainable energy, manufacturing non-polluting vehicles, and has made strides in space exploration by establishing a remote sensing centre, all utilising national expertise.”
Heggy said other initiatives in the Arab world had begun with great promise but failed to maintain momentum. The vision that educational cities would unite Arab scientists and experts from abroad to create a modern scientific community that would nurture Arab talents proved to be short-lived, he said. “While the idea was commendable, its execution fell short because those responsible for its implementation relied on simplistic reasoning.”
Heggy contrasted the funding model at American institutions like the University of Southern California with the limited government funding that Arab research institutions rely on. “I am part of a university that receives $800 million in annual donations from the public, while leaders of Arab research universities view their comparatively small budgets as substantial, largely because many of them lack experience in scientific research to begin with,” he said.
The policy makers who set Arab universities’ budgets “perceive that funding is primarily directed toward foreign staff, who constitute the majority in these universities, rather than benefiting the local population. Furthermore, they believe the country has no need for this research, as it fails to acknowledge the realities of climate change, environmental hazards, cybersecurity threats, or any other risks. Consequently, they argue that shutting down these universities would be a way to conserve financial resources.”
He added: “The aim of these universities is merely to produce graduates who can read, write, and secure employment, rather than viewing them as catalysts for intellectual and societal transformation to address the various risks we face. This limited perspective contributes to the significant impact of natural disasters in the Arab world. True preservation of resources and sustainability stems from [producing] knowledge, rather than simply relying on imported knowledge.”
Developing Higher Education
Heggy believes that for Arab research universities to thrive, they must adhere to the original vision upon which they were established and receive robust support from the highest levels of leadership.
“Research universities require visionary leaders who are forward-thinking. It’s inconceivable for an institution preparing students for the future to be led by individuals stuck in the past. We need leaders who prioritise the university’s mission over rankings, as many administrations are more focused on their reputation than their actual role. What we need are exemplary university administrations that function as institutions capable of achieving what cannot be accomplished beyond their walls, rather than simply mirroring the society around them.”
He added: “Many countries, including Egypt and those in the Arabian Gulf, often rely on foreign consulting firms for critical issues related to climate, space, and the environment, often at the expense of their own funded universities. As a result, national universities find themselves competing against these foreign entities and other local organisations that perceive the universities as not yet capable of contributing effectively to national development.”
Despite these challenges, Heggy remains optimistic about the potential for reform. “We are not facing an insurmountable tragedy, and these issues can be addressed,” he said. “While our nation has many problems, they are not beyond our reach. The path to reforming university education starts with leaders and heads of institutions in each country taking personal ownership of the higher education agenda.”
He saw parallels in two successful Arab models: “In Morocco, universities are named after kings, and similarly in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This support is why Saudi universities rank highly, as no one would dare cut their budgets, which are established by royal decree.”
He stated, “A quality university produces a doctor capable of providing effective treatment and an engineer who can construct buildings that won’t collapse during earthquakes.”
You can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel and listen to it on Al-Fanar Media podcast, available on Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube.
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