Ben-Gurion University's Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change says the war has made international collaboration harder. Budgets have shifted, and some partners hesitate to work with Israel or visit the country. The school's head, Prof. Shimon Rachmilevitch, said the university's academic reputation helps it keep attracting partners.
Research and resources
More than 190 researchers work across the school, in fields including engineering, medicine, literature, social work, agriculture, energy, water studies and geography. The school builds on five decades of dryland research at Ben-Gurion University. Five years ago, the university brought that expertise together under an interdisciplinary mission.
“We must work in an interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary, manner to tackle these topics – climate, desertification, sustainability,” Rachmilevitch said. “Only when you work together can you really get answers.”
One project studies sweet potatoes and their roots. Rachmilevitch calls the root the “hidden herb” of agriculture, and said his team has found ways to increase yields by at least 50%. The researchers are also working to make harvesting easier, improve the crop's nutritional profile, study who has eaten it historically and turn their findings into practical applications and policy recommendations. Medical researchers, food anthropologists and policy experts all take part.
Other projects seek to change the gut microbiome of dairy cattle, reducing methane emissions by as much as 20% to 30%. Another aims to convert urine into fertilizer. Water and nitrogen scarcity limit agriculture in dry regions, Rachmilevitch said.
The school puts more than NIS 1 million a year into postgraduate scholarships. It has also started a bachelor's degree in sustainability, which students can pair as a double major with subjects from physics to archaeology.
Climate programs and cooperation
Each year, Ben-Gurion University sends a committee to the United Nations' climate conference, COP, and broadcasts live from the summit to roughly 5,000 Israeli high school students. In 2025, the university and the Education Ministry created the annual Youth Climate Conference. Each year, they select 40 schools to present sustainability projects, and Ben-Gurion mentors students before they present to the president of Israel at his climate forum. The school also awards an annual stipend for the best environmental high school thesis.
The university works with the Health Ministry and the Heschel Center for Sustainability to train senior officials in climate management. Participants travel to Europe to study international models. Ben-Gurion has also launched a public climate-data platform, ipcc.bgu.ac.il, with interactive graphs that track temperature, wildfire activity and other indicators.
The professor who serves as Israel's official point of contact to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification is based at the university's Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research. The school and the Foreign Affairs Ministry lead Israel's delegation to related international conferences, including one in Mongolia in August. Run jointly with the convention, the biennial Drylands, Deserts and Desertification conference draws roughly 1,000 participants from around the world.
The school's National Institute for Climate and Environmental Policy works with Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Cyprus. The school has taken its high school climate conference model to Kenya, and is considering Malawi. “We still haven't given up hope” on cooperation with Israel's Arab neighbors, Rachmilevitch said, pointing to partnerships with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
Funding and international partners
Much of the school's growth came after Michael Sonnenfeldt committed to donate $1 million annually for 20 years. Rachmilevitch said that funding helped bring in additional government and international investment. “Money brings money when people see that things are happening,” he said, adding that the government and Kenyan government had started to invest.
Rachmilevitch said the war has made international collaborations harder, as budgets shifted and some partners became more hesitant. “As an academic, this is what we do all the time,” he said. “We always submit grants, and for most of them we get rejections.” He said Ben-Gurion's academic reputation helps limit the political situation's effect on its international efforts.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev cooperated in writing this article. The Jerusalem Post's Environment and Climate Change portal is produced with the university's Goldman Sonnenfeldt School; the Jerusalem Post says it retains editorial control over content.