Clearly, most third world countries do not have the facilities, expertise and budget to perform such advanced research. They tend to focus more on fundamental research and commercially potential research. How can the importance or significant contribution of stable isotope research to a country and its potential in advancing the country be highlighted.
There are many but all depends on country's scientific and administrative policies.
I think to get such a machine financed you need to start with one single large project in the field of applied geoscience for which a certain method of isotope geochemistry is crucial and which supports some branch of economy your government is interested in, e.g. soil quality and agriculture, exploration and mining, hydrology and water management, geohazards and risk assessment.
It can be used to determine the provenience of fluids (magmatic, meteoric, etc) which can be used in Economic Geology for studying mineral deposits.
Most so-called 'third world' countries suffer from lacking access to clean water. Light stable isotope studies may help to investigate the regional hydrologial cycles, sources of ground and surface waters and dissolved species. Exploration was already mentioned. But also sources of pharmaceuticals, food, drugs etc. will be important topics. Most of these aspects may ask for the application of light stable isotopes, but 'non-traditional' isotope systems will add on that, too.
Best Michael
Chin,
From the short list of answers to just this question, we see that there are many applications to applied geoscience, economic geology, and water quality. This seems like a great opportunity to build interdisciplinary collaborations to obtain the reources for isotope analysis machinery and training that individual labs could not provide. Perhaps collaborations could be international where necessary.
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