Professor of Land and Water Resources
American University of Beirut
Rami Zurayk is a professor of land and water resources in the Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management at the American University of Beirut (AUB), director of AUB's Interfaculty Graduate Environmental Science Program (IGESP), and environmental program coordinator for the University’s Ecosystem Management Program. He is also a policy advisor to Lebanon’s Minister of Agriculture, founder and president of the Association of Lebanese Organic Agriculture (ALOA), and founder of “Healthy Basket.”
Zurayk has worked extensively in the Arab world for a number of international development organizations such as the UNDP, UNEP, World Bank, Oxfam, and the International Cooperation for Development. He has published extensively on issues of environment and development and on sustainable agriculture, indigenous knowledge, and community development. His most recent book, Food, Farming and Freedom: Sowing the Arab Spring, will be published by Just World Books in May 2011. He has also co-authored The Empty Breadbasket: Food Shortage and Farming Crisis in the Fertile Crescent with Tariq Tell, which will be published by Pluto Press in 2012. He blogs www.landandpeople.blogspot.com, is active in Arab civil society, and writes a weekly column on food and farming in the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar. He researches issues at the nexus of food, environment, livelihoods, and politics.
Zurayk earned a BS (in agriculture), a Diploma of Ingenieur Agricole, and an MS (in irrigation) from AUB and a PhD in plant science from Oxford University.
Profile as of 5/18/2011