Egypt Faces Massive Problem In Nile Delta - 50 cm Sea Level Rise Would Displace, Impoverish Millions

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CAIRO, 7 October 2009 (IRIN) - Egypt’s Delta region faces a natural disaster of massive proportions by 2020 unless urgent action is taken to better manage scarce fresh water resources and come up with solutions to mitigate the effects of rising sea levels, according to government officials. The country is facing the dual threat of water needs surpassing resources by 2017, and rising sea levels in the decades ahead inundating much of the fertile Delta region, home to 60 percent of Egypt’s 78 million people, it added.

“Many of the towns and urban areas in the north of the Delta will suffer from the rise in the level of the Mediterranean with effect from 2020, and about 15 percent of Delta land is under threat from the rising sea level and the seepage into ground water,” Environment Minister George Maged told a parliamentary committee earlier this year.

Mohamed al-Raey of Alexandria University told IRIN in Cairo that flooding had already begun with the Mediterranean rising an average of 2 centimetres annually over the past decade. “It has already flooded parts of Egypt’s shoreline,” he said, predicting an increase in sandstorms and longer periods of drought followed by flooding.

Researchers predict the Mediterranean will rise by 30-100cm by the end of the century. A one-metre sea-level rise would submerge Alexandria. Cairo has allocated US$300 million to build concrete walls to protect Alexandria’s beaches as part of a “national strategy study” to combat the coming floods.

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