Egypt, a country where pharaohs once commanded the Nile and cats enjoyed diplomatic immunity, is now wrestling with modern environmental challenges that no ancient scribe could have predicted. The nation faces a complex tangle of issues: rapid urbanization, shrinking green spaces, plastic waste that seems to multiply like desert mirages, and the slow but steady warming of the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Add to that the annual drama of the Nile — too much water, too little water, or water carrying things that nobody wants to swim with — and you have a country navigating a delicate ecological tightrope.
But Egypt isn’t just struggling; it’s also innovating. And some of its most creative solutions come not from ministries but from civil society. Nature Conservation Egypt is one of the country’s leading environmental NGOs, championing bird protection, wetland conservation, and the survival of migratory species that treat Egypt like an airport lounge on their way between continents. Their fieldwork in places like Lake Qarun and the Red Sea wetlands has quietly shaped policy for years.
Then there’s HEPCA — the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association — a powerhouse NGO guarding the Red Sea’s coral reefs from overfishing, careless tourism, and the occasional boat captain who mistakes a reef for a parking spot. HEPCA’s mooring buoy system has become a regional model, proving that even popular tourist hubs can protect biodiversity when the rules are clear and the buoys are bright blue.
New sustainability movements are popping up too: youth-led recycling initiatives in Cairo, clean-energy startups in Alexandria, gardens and hydroponics farms on rooftops and Nile cleanup campaigns that feel half environmental crusade, half street festival. Egypt’s ambitious Benban Solar Park, one of the largest in the world, shows what national-scale renewable energy can look like when the sun cooperates — and in Egypt, it usually does. Almost every day is a beach day.
BenBan Solar Park from above. The Benban Solar Park has a total installed capacity of 1.65 gigawatts (GW). It’s one of the largest solar installations in the world and a major pillar of Egypt’s renewable-energy strategy.
Eco-challenges remain big, but the momentum is growing. In true Egyptian style, progress arrives with a mix of determination, improvisation, and just enough humor to survive the heat.
It’s hard to monitor vessels that pollute out at sea, so five aircrafts from Algeria, France, Italy, Morocco and Spain got together to keep an eye on the Mediterranean Sea in a recent coordinated aerial surveillance program organized by the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Center for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC).
Nuclear energy is a low carbon power source, but whether or not it should be considered a renewable energy source is long debated and fought over –- even in the Middle East where the industry is nascent.
Middle Easterners blessed with oil wealth love to flaunt their gold. Don’t be surprised to find gold bars sold at dispensing machine in Dubai or driving around Abu Dhabi as white gold Mercedes. But there are ways to green your gold. Gold is not just a stable element on the periodic table, it is also used […]
A new study adds to a small body of research, through which a picture is emerging: colorectal cancer, commonly known as colon cancer, strikes younger people in Egypt far more frequently than it does in Europe or the US, making it much more lethal and socially destructive.
New scientific reports suggests that coastal flooding for Middle East and North African countries will be much worse than estimated six years ago. What countries are bracing for the severe effects of climate change? Egypt sets the stage.
A young tourist from Nanjing, China scrawled his name Ding Jinhao onto a 3500 year-old relief in a Luxor, Egypt temple. Big mistake.
A condition of child blindness called retinitis pigmentosis afflicts about one in every 3000 births. A new treatment pulled out of a Sinai lake is now an orange algae powder pill: it can quadruple the vision improvement in some people, finds new research from Israel. Algae in its various forms and colors is not only […]
When the call went out Mars One might have expected a few dozen people would be willing to accept a suicide mission to a dead planet. Instead, they were overwhelmed with more than 80,000 applicants including at least a dozen from the Middle East.
Egyptians love sugar cane molasses, referred to in Arabic as asal eswed ("black honey"), for its sweet taste, and also its perceived health benefits. These are believed to include strengthening a person's immune system and helping to treat anemia.
Sporadic street violence, economic distress and political polarization were mostly put on ice this past Sunday as Egyptians of all classes and religions held picnics, took boat rides on the Nile and celebrated Sham el-Nessim, a holiday whose roots most believe date back to this land’s ancient inhabitants. The event features a stinky fish.
Live animal exports to Egypt from Australia have been suspended after Animals Australia – a leading animal rights organization who has exposed cruelty in the controversial export trade – revealed new evidence of widespread animal cruelty in the North African country.
Lotus flowers were once considered sacred in Egypt and parts of Asia. They hold a secret to a clean nanotechnology. Like the ancient blue pigment found in ancient Egypt, old spiritual materials like the lotus flower inspire new environmental science: As assistant professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at King Abdulla University of Science and […]
Egypt is not a country that is fond of reporting oil spills – whether they occur on the Red Sea, in the Suez Canal or the Nile. But it has managed to start clean up a worrying diesel spill into the Nile River, a spill which has leaked onto the shores of Lake Nasser, China.org […]
For ancient Egyptians blue was the color of rebirth. Today their chemical invention of artificial lapiz lazuli means new advances for lights, lasers and more. According to a new paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society the ancient pigment known as Egyptian blue may have important new applications in nanotechnology. Researchers at […]
Is the Red Sea shark spotted at Eilat beach, Israel escaping illegal hunters in Egypt? While it’s rare to find sharks in the Mediterranean Sea (they are almost extinct), they are not so uncommon in the Red Sea. Its warm waters and ample food source bait sharks who sometimes get personal with bathers and divers. […]