Africa, Combating Desertification and Drought, Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Middle East & North Africa, Population, Poverty & SDGs

EGYPT: Desert Reclamation the Country’s Best Hope – Or a Mirage?

Leslie-Ann Boctor* - IPS/IFEJ

CAIRO, Jul 30 2007 (IPS) - “You can grow anything here,” says 76-year-old Mohamed Ahmed, spreading his arms wide to point to the cascading bougainvilleas and an orchard of mango trees drooping with fruit. But, “When I first came here, there was nothing here but sand and more sand.”

Urban development along Egypt&#39s lifeline. Credit: Leslie-Ann Boctor

Urban development along Egypt's lifeline. Credit: Leslie-Ann Boctor

The lush landscape that surrounds him is situated on the road connecting the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to the coastal city of Alexandria. Ahmed left his traditional Bedouin roots in the Sinai Peninsula to come to this area on the promise of work, and encouraged by then President Anwar Sadat’s bold announcement that he would lead Egypt to conquer the desert. He found a job at the Desert Development Centre, a research body run by the American University in Cairo.

Thirty years later, Egypt is still reclaiming the desert, to provide work and living space for its expanding population. However, certain economists and environmentalists fear the country’s efforts to green the desert are ill-advised.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that about 96 percent of Egypt is covered by the Sahara desert, with the remaining, more fertile land concentrated along the Nile River that snakes through the eastern half of the country. Although the Nile Valley accounts for just four percent of Egypt’s surface area, it is home to virtually all of this north African nation’s 79 million residents; and, the overcrowding in the valley looks set to become worse, given that Egypt’s population is expected to double by 2050.

This has prompted authorities to develop plans for large-scale resettlement under the auspices of the Toshka project. The hope is that over the next decade, some six million Egyptians will move from the Nile Valley to reclaimed land in south-western Egypt, where they will produce wheat, cotton and other produce – and find jobs in light manufacturing. Official estimates put unemployment at 9.3 percent.

The land will be irrigated with water piped from the Nile some 300 kilometres away, and from subterranean sources. Under the ambitious 70 billion dollar scheme, officials plan to reclaim 1.4 million hectares of the country’s approximately 95.5 million hectares of desert in the next ten years.


Toshka has already seen construction of the world’s largest water pumping station in the Western Desert, part of the Sahara – a development that was inaugurated last year by President Hosni Mubarak. Located 1,300 kilometres south-west of Cairo, the station pumps 14.5 million cubic meters of water daily from Lake Nasser, situated upstream of the Aswan Dam, close to Egypt’s border with Sudan.

“Egypt needs to use the desert to take care of the tremendous increase in population. We also have to use the desert to produce food, which we are now importing most of,” says Adly Bishai, founder of the Desert Development Centre.

However, critics say the target of 1.4 million hectares is unrealistic, and estimate that only half this amount of land can be reclaimed if water levels in the Nile remain constant.

There is also a sizeable question mark over the long term sustainability of this use of the desert.

The Toshka project is estimated to require an additional five to nine billion cubic metres of water annually. Officials argue that the increased use of Nile water this will necessitate can be compensated for by one billion cubic metres of rainfall, 7.5 billion cubic metres of ground water, and five billion cubic metres of recycled agricultural drainage water.

Should something go awry with these alternative water sources, however, the project might find itself running short of supplies – given that Egypt is already using its full allocation of 55 billion cubic meters of Nile water per year, awarded under the 1959 Nile Treaty.

Given that Ethiopia and Sudan have voiced the desire to have a greater share of the Nile waters, even this quota may be placed in jeopardy at some point. The distribution of water in the Nile Basin is a source of controversy in the region.

In addition, queries have been raised about the quality of land reclaimed for agricultural use.

Decades of research at the Desert Development Centre have produced sustainable practices allowing desert soil to deliver impressive yields, as the bountiful harvest in the orchard that Ahmed gestured to shows.

Nonetheless, according to independent estimates, it takes 100 reclaimed hectares of land to equal the output of one hectare of existing Nile soil (ironically, urban sprawl and industry have now taken over much of the Nile Valley).

With the agriculture sector contributing less than 25 percent of Egypt’s national income while accounting for 88 percent of the country’s water consumption, there are also concerns about the economic rationale of establishing fields in the desert.

Others argue that there would have been no need for the Toshka project if Egypt insisted on proper water usage in agriculture.

Flood irrigation is used in over 70 percent of Egypt’s cultivated land; but this is an inefficient process, resulting in the wastage of about 80 percent of the water used – something Bishai calls “utterly, utterly wrong”.

This situation is encouraged by the fact that government does not require citizens to pay the full cost of water. Under the current system, farmers are not charged for the delivery, use or drainage of irrigation water – and there are no water metres in Cairo apartments. Instead, water bills are based on the number of rooms in an apartment.

Golf courses, and the luxurious lawns of upscale gated communities in Egypt’s cities are futher examples of questionable water management in this desert country.

Desert ecologist Mostafa Saleh believes that authorities should focus more on eco-tourism in their efforts to ensure a future for Egyptians.

“The value of an oasis as an attraction can bring in more money than 4,000 acres of rice fields…and it’s certainly more sustainable,” he says.

“Rather than produce something that you can obtain for one hundredth of the cost elsewhere, we should use this water, which is a very valuable commodity, to maximize the revenue for the people of Egypt,” adds Saleh, who has conducted feasibility studies for Egypt’s Tourism Authority on the value of land reclamation schemes compared to that of eco-tourism projects.

One of Egypt’s handful of eco-lodges, Adrere Amellal (“White Mountain” in the Berber language) in the western oasis of Siwa, has won international recognition for its sustainable practices. The lodge is the brainchild of Mounir Neamatalla – president of an Egyptian consulting firm, Environmental Quality International – who labels efforts to reclaim the desert a “huge transgression” in resource management.

“We consider the desert the enemy that we somehow have to fight. But instead of conquering the desert, we should ask ourselves how we can live in harmony with it. Instead of greening the desert, let’s enjoy the desert as it is. There’s enormous economic value in the desert without water.”

It seems Adrere Amellal’s conscientious approach to desert living has had a domino effect in the Siwa community. Local authorities recently decided to scale back a land reclamation project from 250,000 acres to 25,000 acres, a development hailed by Neamatalla as “better late than never”.

For the moment, however, Toshka appears to be moving ahead, irrespective of environmental and economic concerns.

When he first approved the project a decade ago, Mubarak stood on the banks of Lake Nasser and described the initiative as ushering in “the era we finally move out of the narrow confines of the Nile Valley”.

But, those confines may prove to be even more difficult to escape than previously thought.

* This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS – Inter Press Service – and IFEJ, the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

 
Republish | | Print |


crimson waters