The 40th anniversary of ARCAL was celebrated on the margins of the IAEA's Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Science, Technology and Applications and the Technical Cooperation Programme. (Photo: D. Calma/IAEA)
During the event, the Vice Prime Minister of Cuba, Eduardo Martínez Díaz, spoke of the challenges that climate change pose to small island states, highlighting that his country is applying nuclear and isotopic techniques to monitor its impact in coastal areas. Recently, Cuba’s Centro de Estudios Ambientales de Cienfuegos (CEAC) became an IAEA Collaborating Centre for marine research.
Peru emphasized the positive impact of the regional collaboration on agriculture. “We developed quinoa seeds resistant to mildew using plant mutation breeding techniques,” said Peru’s Minister of Agricultural Development and Irrigation, Ángel Manero Campos, while thanking the IAEA and ARCAL for support in this area.
The Minister of Health of Honduras, Carla Paredes Reyes, welcomed the assistance to the country’s health system. Through ARCAL, Honduras received its first CT machine and was able to develop capacity in nuclear medicine.
The use of nuclear technology in industry was stressed by the President of the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission, Francisco Rondinelli Junior. “For 40 years, Brazil participates in ARCAL to make the most of techniques that add value to products and services,” he said, adding that the country recently inaugurated a state-of-the-art mobile irradiation plant to support wastewater treatment.
The Director General of El Salvador’s Agency for International Cooperation, Karla Majano de Palma, underscored ARCAL’s role in promoting South-South cooperation, especially to train professionals in nuclear medicine and oncology.
Speaking at the opening of the event, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi thanked ARCAL for the collaboration and highlighted IAEA flagship initiatives to tackle health, food security and environmental challenges, which have been launched to “strengthen services to Member States and more effectively change and improve people’s lives.”
Under its Rays of Hope initiative, for example, the IAEA is procuring 32 mammographs for early breast cancer detection for ARCAL countries, which will benefit 250,000 women every year.
Through the IAEA’s NUTEC Plastics initiative, 18 Latin American countries have harmonized protocols for monitoring microplastics in marine coasts, generating valuable data to support mitigation strategies.
Atoms4Food, the joint initiative between IAEA and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to increase food security, is helping ARCAL countries increase agricultural productivity. For example, following the use of the sterile insect technique, new cherry-growing areas in Argentina have been recognized as free of fruit flies, allowing exports to increase to 5,600 tons per year.
The technical cooperation programme is the IAEA’s main mechanism to facilitate the transfer of nuclear science and technology to Member States. Through the programme, the IAEA supports four Regional and Cooperative Agreements: ARCAL, AFRA for IAEA Member States in Africa, ARASIA for Arab States in Asia, and RCA for countries in Asia and the Pacific.
