The international workshop on Desertification Combat and Food Safety – The Added Value of Camel Producers was a good opportunity for the meeting between desert and camel scientists from Western European countries, Mediterranean countries and Central Asian Republics. Scientists from Central Asia are confronted with the demanding challenge of desertification and maintenance of animal productivity in order to satisfy human requirements both in quantity and quality. The problem is complex and solutions need a multidisciplinary investment. The knowledge of the desertification process and the place of animal production in desert ecosystem is in increasing in many countries. New approaches and methodologies have been implemented for a better observation and understanding of the situation. The present workshop contributes to the exchange between scientists in order to allow access to those new approaches and methodologies by all desert and camel scientists in the involved countries.

Most of the foreign participants to the workshop are well-known in the camel sciences community. All of them have significantly contributed to a better understanding of camel biology, camel productivity or of the camel as an element of the desert ecosystem. The confrontation of the research achieved in those countries with the scientific activities achieved in Central Asia is quite important. It contributes to the improvement of the methods used in those countries and at the very least helps the scientists from Central Asia to access more recent publications and to reach the international standard for publications. A great effort is still necessary and this workshop has to be continued by specific collaboration between research institutes or universities. The meetings and informal exchanges allowed by the workshop were a first step towards future collaboration.

Some final recommendations were proposed as is usual in such scientific meetings. However, recommendations are fruitful if all participants play their part in the achievement of them, inside their discipline, or field study, and if we are collectively able to convince policy makers to support such and such research or development aspect.

The co-directors of this workshop are indebted to NATO and secondly to the French Embassy for their support in this workshop. Three institutes were involved in the general organization: one French (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development – CIRAD) and two Turkmen Institutes (National Institute of Desert, Fauna and Flora – NIDFF, and National Institute of Livestock and Veterinary Medicine (NILVM). Their collaboration was able to overcome the traditional difficulties of organizing a meeting gathering forty scientists from seventeen different countries.

Dr Bernard FAYE and Dr Palmated ESENOV, Co-directors and Scientific editors