World leaders and senior officials representing 56 Muslim nations have pledged to increase investment in science and technology as a means of tackling food, water, health and climate change challenges at the first ever Islamic-word Science and Technology summit which took place this week.

Summit delegates included the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, Uzbek President, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Pakistani President, Mamnoon Hussain, Bangladeshi President, Abdul Hamid and Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani amongst other Heads of State. The summit was organized by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the world’s second largest intergovernmental body after the UN.

The summit concluded with all 56 nations adopting two historic documents;

The Astana Declaration on enhancing science, technology, innovation and modernization in the Islamic world - the Declaration reaffirmed the commitment of member states towards increasing investment in education, science, health and water in order to achieve the goals of the OIC’s 2025: Plan of Action and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 2030).

The OIC Science, Technology and Innovations Agenda 2026 - a series of policy commitments and recommendations designed to achieve key Islamic world development goals by the year 2026. On water, the Agenda includes:

• Protecting against water shortages
• Increase efficiency in water use and combat desertification using new technologies and farming methodologies;
• Prepare national water budgets at the ‘local’ levels where possible, supplemented by monitoring of sub-aquifers, glaciers, and loss in canals

On managing Big Data with security in the digital economy, the Agenda has committed to connecting OIC Member States through secure, high speed, fibre-optic land and sea based networks and satellite links.

The Agenda also includes a commitment to jointly design and launch remote sensing satellites for observation, crop estimation and disaster management, rescue at sea, and weather prediction.

The OIC Assistant Secretary General for Science and Technology (and former Ambassador of Pakistan to Saudi Arabia), Ambassador Naeem Khan, said:

“As more people in the Islamic world emerge out of poverty, energy demand is increasing. This is being aggravated by climate change, with many OIC countries inhabiting climate-sensitive regions already facing desertification and degradation of land and water. Several studies have also shown a link between climate change and the subsequent effect on drought, food prices and the outbreak of conflict.”

“As a result, the OIC organised the first Islamic-world science and technology summit to galvanise the Muslim world in investing in the core scientific and technological tools to generate solutions against emerging development threats”.

The Summit on S&T by the OIC member states looks set to become an ongoing conference - the Astana Declaration says that the second S&T summit would be held in Uzbekistan at a date to be determined later. 

Click here to download The Astana Declaration