Egypt is resisting, through governmental and international mechanisms, 5 dangers created by climate change, including two threats that it warns of occurring in 2100, namely the possibility of the sinking of the city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta, which overlook the Mediterranean Sea, and the threat of coral reefs, the rare national wealth in the Red Sea.
These dangers are among others that the world is facing due to climate changes, which are expected to be presented again at the United Nations Climate Conference, which Egypt will host in late 2022, representing the African continent.
According to official data and media, monitored by Anatolia, the five most prominent threats in Egypt due to climate fluctuations are the possibility of the Nile Delta drowning, Alexandria (north), threatening large areas of agricultural land, as well as vital economic coral reefs by changing their colors and death, and increasing rates of extreme weather events. Like storms and torrents.
In the face of confrontation, the government continues through legal and other construction and agricultural mechanisms, such as establishing flood facilities, early warning stations, concrete and sand bridges, and launching a presidential initiative to visit 1.5 million acres.
The Nile River delta is one of the areas most threatened by flooding with rising sea levels (Shutterstock)
The most prominent threats and confrontation mechanisms, according to Anatolia monitoring, were as follows:
First: The possibility of the Nile Delta drowning
On December 26, 2021, Minister of Irrigation Mohamed Abdel-Aty said that the Nile River Delta (a low coastal area in the north of the country teeming with population, industrial, tourist and agricultural areas) is one of the most threatened (drained) areas in the world and the most sensitive to climate changes with rising sea levels. .
Abdel-Aty added that the (governmental) Beach Protection Authority is currently implementing a project to enhance adaptation to the effects of climate changes on the northern coasts and the Nile Delta, which is scheduled to end in 2025.
The project extends over about 69 km (endangered and below sea level) in 5 coastal governorates: Port Said, Damietta, Dakahlia, Kafr El-Sheikh and Beheira, and is funded by a grant from the UN Green Climate Fund worth about $31 million.
The project includes the establishment of early warning stations, beach bridges and sandbars, according to the minister's statements.
And in early November, the director of the same project, Mohamed Ahmed Ali, confirmed in an interview with the private Al-Shorouk newspaper, that about 60% of the work to protect the lowlands in the delta, which is threatened by the flooding of large areas, threatens the population and infrastructure and interferes with the salty sea water. With its underground irrigation counterpart.
In November 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned of the flooding of Alexandria (Shutterstock)
Second: the possibility of the sinking of Alexandria
In November 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned, during the Climate Change Conference, of the sinking of cities: Alexandria (Egypt), Miami (American), and Shanghai (Chinese), and brought back to the fore an old talk in Egypt about this danger.
The areas lower than sea level in Alexandria, not all of them, are threatened by erosion (erosion by sea waves) and drowning, according to a previous interview with Anatolia, reported by the Egyptian academic specialized in dam engineering, Mohamed Hafez.
On this possibility, the Egyptian Minister of Irrigation commented, at the time, in televised statements, saying that what Johnson had mentioned was not surprising to Egypt, but rather it has been working on it for a long time, and it will not happen today or tomorrow, and it could happen in the year 2100, stressing that confrontation measures are already taking place.
The Ministry of Irrigation allocated more than 7 billion pounds (445 million dollars) in the previous 5-6 years to implement protection measures on Egyptian beaches, especially in Alexandria, including setting up early warning devices, according to televised statements at the time by Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad.
In the context of facing the possibility of the sinking of Alexandria, the government built several projects, most notably concrete barriers, L-shaped sea tongues, and wave walls, especially in the historic Qaitbay Citadel and the city’s Corniche, according to official data.
Sea level rise of only half a meter may lead to the sinking of about half a million acres of agricultural land (Shutterstock)
Third: Threatening agricultural land
And in mid-November, the state-owned Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies published a study on climate repercussions, which predicted that a sea level rise of only half a meter could lead to the sinking of about half a million acres of agricultural land, and the intrusion of saline water into the ground, which It affects crops and agricultural production.
According to the study prepared by researcher Amna Fayed, the unprecedented rise in temperatures in Egypt in the summer of 2021 affected production and its quality, as the productivity of fruit and vegetable crops declined by more than 50% in some of them.
On the other hand, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi launched, in December 2015, an initiative to plant 1.5 million feddans, which local reports see as for future development and expansion, and to compensate for land losses due to encroachments or negative impact from climate change.
On February 21 and 22, 2022, an Egyptian UN workshop on the dangers of climate change in Sharm El-Sheikh (east) recommended the need to develop new agricultural crops capable of withstanding temperatures and salinity, to confront the shifting of climatic seasons and extreme temperature fluctuations.
Coral reefs in the Red Sea, threatened by rising temperatures above the tolerance limit (Shutterstock)
Fourth: Threatening the future of coral reefs
According to Fayed's same study, coral reefs in the Red Sea are threatened by rising temperatures that are beyond tolerance, and increasing depths as a result of rising sea levels, which means blocking light and dying.
Because of the high temperature, what is known as reef bleaching, a disease like the plague for it, appeared, according to local reports.
A report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued in November 2019, expected that Egypt would lose about 72% of its coral reefs by 2100 in the most pessimistic scenario, or 12.5%, according to what the writer Nabil El-Hadi said, in an article on February 25, 2020 in the newspaper Sunrise.
86% of tourism activity in the Red Sea depends on reef tourism (such as swimming next to it), according to Al-Hadi, so Egypt is the first in the world in reef tourism, according to the same study.
To counter this, the Ministry of Tourism approved, last October, an international initiative to protect the reefs, which have 209 species in Egypt, based on the implementation of environmental standards, in contrast to the continuous implementation of the Protected Reserves Law, which exposes the aggressor to reefs to imprisonment and fines.
There have become violent weather phenomena due to climate changes (social networking sites)
Fifth: Increasing rates of extreme weather events
On February 23, 2021, Mahmoud Shaheen, director of early warning at the Meteorological Authority, told Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper (privately) that there had become violent weather phenomena due to climate changes.
Indeed, Egypt has witnessed climatic fluctuations, in which rates of extreme weather events have increased, such as the monitoring of the Beni Suef governorate (central) with the largest amount of rain in 300 years, reaching about 51 million cubic meters of water, and the work of protection against torrential rain succeeded in overcoming it and passing the excess water to the Nile River. , according to the Minister of Irrigation on February 22, 2022.
Facing the dangers of floods, the Ministry of Irrigation built 1,500 protection facilities from 2014 until now, according to the minister.
According to local media and official data, Egypt has witnessed, especially since last year, unprecedented dust storms, high temperatures, summer rains, and rare snowfall in Alexandria and Hurghada (east).
In addition to the occurrence of the phenomenon of waterfall in Alexandria, which is similar to the fall of a quantity of water vertically at once from giant clouds in a specific area and not scattered.
As a result of these extreme weather events, Egypt is re-characterizing its weather, which is known to be hot, dry in summer, warm and rainy in winter, through a committee formed about two years ago to study the climate until 2100.