Egypt’s Nile Delta is among the lushest land on Earth. But it's also some of the most vulnerable to climate change.
Trapped between the rising Mediterranean and the encroaching Sahara, its tens of millions of people risk disaster.
For Egypt, Europe, and the wider region, the ramifications will likely be far-reaching unless serious measures are taken.
Alittle over 40% of Egypt’s population live on a bit less than 2% of the land. Roughly half of the country’s food is grown within this lotus-shaped wedge. Such is the region’s importance, a former environment minister said in 2016, that Egypt would sooner part with its Pyramids than its most prized, crop-growing terrain.
Beginning perhaps with the construction and operation of the Aswan High Dam in southern Egypt in the 1970s, which stifled the flow of rich river sediment, farmers lost access to the nutrients that had always allowed their crops to flourish. Having rarely used chemicals before, they’re now heavily dependent on costly, polluting fertilizers.
Then, their once reliable water supply started to ebb. As the last recipients of the Nile’s waters, Delta residents are saddled with a river that’s been dirtied with industrial, agricultural, and municipal waste over almost 7,000 kilometers.
Most recently, a potent mixture of intensifying climate stresses and high population growth has burdened the landscape with new challenges. In what amounts to something of a perfect storm, the delta is subsiding because of that decrease in Nile sediment (and excessive groundwater extraction), at the same time as the Mediterranean is rising. Seawater is penetrating freshwater aquifers along the coastal strip as a consequence. Those once-clement temperatures are now often anything but.
Egypt’s population is set to reach 100 million in late 2019, a roughly 30% increase since 2000. Experts and locals alike warn that the situation has every potential to deteriorate. In a fast-warming and growing part of the world, the delta is flashing a neon warning sign of potential peril to come.
Population Density
The Nile delta is densely populated and roughly half of the country’s food is grown in the lotus shaped wedge. Egypt’s population is set to reach 100 million in late 2019, a roughly 30% increase since 2000.
Source: The Word Bank
Sources: UNEP 1987
Agriculture accounts for almost a third of jobs in the country, including 45% of all women in the workforce, and contributes up to 14.5% of GDP, according to USAID. At the same time, research from the World Bank shows that agriculture also uses 85% of the freshwater resources in Egypt.
There are serious food security implications, too. With Egypt’s population surging by around two million people a year, its demand for crop staples is only growing. But instead of increasing production, yields are crumbling in parts of the Delta and could fall further as declining conditions take a toll.
And the potential security challenges are mounting. In a number of areas, Delta residents have taken to the streets to protest the lack of water, a possible prelude to future unrest as shortages intensify. Upstream dam construction in Ethiopia, agricultural expansion in Sudan, and increasingly erratic rainfall throughout the Nile basin might bode ill for Egypt, which draws over 95% of its freshwater from the river.
Some struggling Delta villagers have already seen enough. Desperate and down on their future prospects, many are moving to Cairo, Alexandria, and other urban areas, adding to Egypt’s high pace of urbanization.
Rising sea levels are threatening everything from major petrochemical works near Idku, to significant archaeological sites and road infrastructure. The main east-west coastal highway has been breached countless times during stormy weather, disrupting commerce. From Port Said to Agami, salt-encrusted buildings and damaged beachside cafes and tourist facilities tell the tale of Mediterranean’s slow, yet unrelenting advance.
The Delta Disappears
The delta is subsiding because of a decrease in Nile sediment and excessive groundwater extraction. At the same time, the Mediterranean is rising. Seawater floods freshwater.
Aquifers along the coastal strip and the desert encroach from the flanks. The population numbers grow and agricultural land diminishes. Climate change multiplies all of these threats at a high speed.
Sources: UNEP
Delta problems won’t remain
confined to Egypt.
Those difficulties increase the possibility that young Egyptians will use established people-smuggling routes to try and migrate to Europe. The country’s northern coastline, on the Delta’s doorstep, is an enticing-looking springboard for traffickers to pass migrants to Libya, and on to Italy.
At 1500 km-long, it’s difficult to fully police the route. Years after thousands of Syrians and other refugees and migrants set out from here, some young Egyptians are following them.
Then there’s the environmental fallout. In an ugly illustration of the borderless nature of pollution, what happens in the Delta rarely stays in the Delta. There are already at least 500 million articles of plastic on the Mediterranean seafloor, according to the UN Environment Programme. An ordinate share of that appears to come from the Nile, one of ten global rivers that might be responsible for about 90% of marine litter.
Mediterranean fishermen won’t thank the Delta either – and not just because of the pollution. Egyptian fishermen suggest that farming difficulties in the Delta might be pushing ex-farmers to try their luck out at sea, contributing to rampant overfishing throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.
So far, at least, though, action appears to be meager. Farmers say they’ve received next to no guidance in what to plant or how they ought to negotiate these harsher conditions. Urban sprawl into farmland continues apace, despite increased enforcement of some building codes. Given that Egypt’s population is projected to reach 150 million by 2050 on current birth rates, there’s increasingly little room for maneuver.
