Children run after each other with kites flying along Egypt’s Nile Delta. Families and friends enjoy the scenery as they enjoy an afternoon picnic. Just a few miles away, farmers work in their fields of green. These diverse crops will feed millions of Egyptians. Throughout the region, cities buzz with people coming and going from factories and offices, playing football with their families, and building the economic engine that will support the nations’ goals for low-carbon climate-resilient development. 

It’s a beautiful picture. A picture of progress, a picture of hope, a picture of peace. Now imagine if this got impacted negatively. The Nile Delta hosts 18 million citizens – almost a quarter of Egypt’s population — as well as countless businesses, economic sectors, farms and more.

This terrifying scenario will come true if climate change isn’t taken seriously. 

Millions at risk

Extraordinary measures

Integrated approaches

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When you think of the Nile, what comes to mind? Egyptian cotton, Baby Moses in a bassinet, waiting among the reeds to be found and brought into the Pharaoh’s palace, a Nile cruise along the riverbanks? An ancient and modern empire?  These things might come to mind if you are sitting on your couch somewhere in the west reading this.

If you are from Ethiopia, Sudan or Egypt your concerns are very different. And they could spell life and death, prosperity or war. And this is a serious time and the world needs to get involved, especially those funding renewable energy projects:

Ethiopia is about to finish the largest hydro-electric dam in Africa and the 7th largest in the world. It’s called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). We have been writing about the dam for years. But now world leaders are paying attention because the dam is about to be completed and be filled.

The water for the Ethiopian dam comes from the headwaters of the Nile where it is called the Blue Nile River, and Egypt might lose half of its Delta or 50% of arable farms as the dam water fills. 

If you are an Egyptian the Mighty Nile is your lifeforce. It is your life and possibly your demise. If 80 percent of your river will be lost, this will spell out catastrophe for Egyptian life as you know it. Who owns mighty rivers? Can a nation suddenly dam one without consideration of who is downstream? These are issues that Israel, Jordan and Syria have faced for millenial, on the Jordan River, a tiny river to compare, but mighty in its own way. 

Losing the Nile is unthinkable to Egyptians. Their pharaohs were the masters of the Nile and they built empires and modern republics on it.

The Pharaohs worshiped crocodiles and they commanded their people to use the Nile to ship giant granite blocks to build the Great Pyramid of Giza nearby. In 1970, Egypt’s post-independence leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, completed the Aswan High Dam, which tamed the seasonal flow of the Nile and transformed Egyptian agriculture.

Egypt justified its dominance over the river by citing a colonial-era water treaty and a 1959 agreement with Sudan. But Ethiopia does not recognize them, and when its former leader, Mengistu Haile Mariam, proposed building a series of dams on the Nile back in 1978, he met threats from Egypt.

The Egyptians and the Ethiopians all need the water for life

Without the Nile Egypt will not be Egypt. Food prices will sour. Irrigation will end. The millions living in slums will be cut off from basic needs. War will most certainly erupt. 

The Arab Spring, climate change, and now Ethiopia’s interest in creating a dam for hydro-electric power all spell disaster for Egypt and the western east.  To mitigate war and catastrophe, humanitarian and political, talks are being mediated by the US Treasury and the World Bank yet there is no agreement the operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Ethiopia is energy ambitious, like every nation

Ethiopia itself emblematic of being one of the world’s poorest countries hopes its 510-foot-tall, 5,840-foot-long structure will finally once and for all hold Ethiopia’s dominant position for the source of the Blue Nile, which is also the source water to 80% of Egypt’s water.

It will have cost $4 billion USD to build it (Reuters) and when the dam is full and in operation the GERD will supply over 6,000 megawatts of electricity  and it will become Africa’s largest hydropower dam.

We can learn from China however on how dam’s devastate local communities, kill entire ecosystems, and wipe out major species (see NYT freshwater giants are dying). Worse will happen if it’s a dam that separates nations, already fragile. Already desperate. 

According to some sources, like the US Media Line, the mediated talks that include Donald Trump “have turned into a disaster.” Though the Media Line does not mention which source. 

America has been a long supporter of Cairo and Egypt with massive amounts of USAID, about $1.5 billion USD a year, going to support the nation. Some funneled into dubious agricultural projects like co-funded with Pepsi Co incentives to increase the output of potatoes per farm –- an expectation obviously to help PepsiCo supply more fried junk food. 

Can and should America be a deal maker in African continent and western east disputes?

America tries to broker water and dam deal

Trump thinks so and has met with water resources ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan at the White House. Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, the United States Treasury and the World Bank. All of them released an agreed statement that there is a “joint commitment to reach a comprehensive, cooperative, adaptive, sustainable, and mutually beneficial agreement on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.”

Which basically says nothing. Or forces anyone to hold there word, but some of the agreed upon terms are below:

• The filling of the GERD will be executed in stages and will be undertaken in an adaptive and cooperative manner that takes into consideration the hydrological conditions of the Blue Nile and the potential impact of the filling on downstream reservoirs. (I ask – Who will be doing ecological/hydrological surveys?)
• Filling will take place during the wet season, generally from July to August, and will continue in September subject to certain conditions. (I ask – Who will set these conditions? Who will hold anyone to them as climate change worsens?)
• The initial filling stage of the GERD will provide for the rapid achievement of a level of 595 meters above sea level and the early generation of electricity, while providing appropriate mitigation measures for Egypt and Sudan in case of severe droughts during this stage. 
• The subsequent stages of filling will be done according to a mechanism to be agreed that determines release based upon the hydrological conditions of the Blue Nile and the level of the GERD that addresses the filling goals of Ethiopia and provides electricity generation and appropriate mitigation measures for Egypt and Sudan during prolonged periods of dry years, drought and prolonged drought.
• During long term operation, the GERD will operate according to a mechanism that determines release based upon the hydrological conditions of the Blue Nile and the level of the GERD that provides electricity generation and appropriate mitigation measures for Egypt and Sudan during prolonged periods of dry years, drought and prolonged drought.
• An effective coordination mechanism and provisions for the settlement of disputes will be established.

Losses filled by the World Bank?

The Egyptian newspaper Mada Masr reported the US administration was pressuring Egypt to accept Ethiopia’s proposals in return for compensation from the World Bank for water shortages.

The Blue Nile is a seasonal river and it fills up when the rain starts in Ethiopia around June until the end of November. It travels to the Aswan dam and meets the Nile River, where it dissipates to the Nile Delta. See image below.

Egypt currently bases its share of the river’s waters on a 1959 deal between Sudan and Egypt that gave it 55.5 billion cubic meters water annually, and Sudan 18.5 bcm. Other countries were not given allocations at that time. So basically were not part of the deal. For instance, Ethiopia was not party to the agreement and does not recognize it. If you read one of the past article we wrote and scroll down through to the comments you will see how Egyptians and Ethiopians are disagreeing about this agreement. 

Meanwhile, concerned experts in Egypt expect a minimum amount of water to be allocated to Egypt. The average flow before the dam was about 50 billion cubic meters (source) and Egyptian sources expect the continuation of 40 billion cubic meters annually. 

No one has agreed yet on how such promises will be kept. Deals made between unstable countries to start with? Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia? 

Egypt started building the dam in 2011, at an opportune time – a moment to sneak in dam planning – when Egypt was dealing with its own major problems, the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak, and the Arab Spring. 

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD or TaIHiGe; Amharic: ታላቁ የኢትዮጵያ ሕዳሴ ግድብ), formerly known as the Millennium Dam and sometimes referred to as Hidase Dam is a gravity dam on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia that has been under construction since 2011. It is in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region of Ethiopia, about 15 km (9 miles) east of the border with Sudan.

At 6.45 gigawatts, the dam will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa when completed, as well as the seventh largest in the world. As of October 2019, the work stood at approximately 70% completion. Once completed, the reservoir could take anywhere between 5 and 15 years to fill with water, depending on hydrologic conditions during the filling period and agreements reached between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt.

Currently 75% of Ethiopians do not have electricity, and the government needs the dam to help the people prosper. Consider countries like Canada that create hydro-electric power as a way of life. Canada is the world’s second producer of hydro-electric power after China. I am a Canadian. We don’t refer to electricity as electricity, we call it hydro.

Ethiopia wants power and prosperity too. And Ethiopia has warned that millions are ready to go to war over it. 

Egypt could lose 50% of its agriculture land

How can water flow be gauged. When is drought, a drought? When should the dam be filled and then stored? Over what time? How does this work with Sudanese dams? No one has the answers yet. And I fear that in 30 years from now we will see what kind of big mistakes we made for not helping Ethiopia go solar. 

The Geological Society of America reported that Egypt would lose 25 percent of its yearly water if the dam’s reservoir was filled within 7 years.  Egyptians don’t believe that the fill time can be drawn out this long. 

Mahmoud Farouk, program coordinator for civil society partnerships at the Project on Middle East Democracy in Washington said in this report on the Media Line: Water shortages would pose “a great danger to the Egyptian Delta.. 17% of Egypt’s agricultural land could be destroyed if Ethiopia fills the reservoir in six years, and that figure rises to 51% if they fill it within three years.”

“My main fear is that Ethiopia might continue to ignore these concerns. Water is a matter of life or death to Egyptians – putting Egypt in the corner isn’t the right policy at all,” said Farouk.

More on the Nile and Egypt:

American Elections Are Bad for the Nile Delta

In The Face of Nilelessness, Egyptians Protest Water Shortages

Nile Water Kills 17,000 Children Each Year

Post Revolution Egypt Wants Windfarms

Top image via CNN.

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Severe air pollution in many locations is making it hard to breathe in the Middle East. Every year there is a massive black-out in Egypt during the season when straw waste is burnt. Now you can see the fires, thanks to NASA.

Although countries like Egypt are trying to lessen air pollution by relying more on less polluting energy like natural gas, this has done little  to curtail murderous air pollution problems in cities like Cairo.

A fly over smog in Cairo

Cairo’s air has been found to be the most polluting in the world in 2007.

To add “fuel to the fire” Egypt is now experiencing its annual wave of “straw fires” in it’s northern Nile Delta  region.

There,  local rice farmers set fire to rice straw in numerous Nile Delta areas, following the annual rice harvest.  This results in large heat index increases that are shown as  “hot spots” as detected by NASA satellite images, shown above.

The polluting smoke caused by these fires eventually is felt in the country’s major population areas, like Cairo.  This adds to already large amounts of existing air pollution caused by vehicles, factories, and other air pollution sources.

Walk with the smog through Cairo

The result is a dark, thick smog that creates a dense “black cloud” of intense air pollution which becomes a major health hazard to  persons suffering from various respiratory problems.

Often referred to as the “black cloud season”, this thick combination of intense air pollution  is exasperated by  12,600 factories pushing emissions into the atmosphere.

Now considered to be an annual event, this pollution phenomenon is increased by as much as 45 per cent during the annual rice straw burning in the Nile Delta.

Silver lining: Urban agriculture sprouts in Cairo

“Burning rice straw accounts for six percent of Egypt’s air pollution throughout the year, but during the rice harvesting season this figure jumps to 45 percent,” said  Environment Minister Maged George to a local paper.

He reported that annual rice production has risen more than 31 per cent; reaching 5.6 million tons.  This increased production results in more than 30 millions tons of waste product.

The burning of so much rice straw and other waste products is what results in the “fuel to the fire” of Egypt’s increasing air pollution problems. And our consumption of these products from lands far away doesn’t help. While last year there was a ban on exporting rice, it seems this year the ban has been lifted.

Egyptian medium grain rice mainly competes with US and Australian rice in global markets and goes for about $800 a ton.

Read more on increasing Middle East air pollution:

Hard to Breathe in the Middle East – Latest NASA Images

Egypt’s Natural Gas Push Does Little to Curtail Murderous Air Pollution

A Black Smog – Craft Chokes Cairo’s Skies

Twelve Million Egyptians to be Affected by Climate Change

Satelite photo of Nile River Delta by NASA/Science Codex:

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It’s not the first links in Cairo, nor the first course near the Cheops, but Insha’allah that Egyptian environmentalists will make it the last!

The game of golf isn’t quite as old as the pyramids, but golfing near the Great Pyramid of Giza has deep roots (unlike new gardens to be planted in the area).

Jordan’s golf green is brown

A favorite pastime in the British Isles where climate ensures steady growth of thick grasses, the sport migrated to the Middle East where it was played largely on sand flats and putting surfaces called “browns”. (Read about Jordan’s only golf course – also naturally landscaped with chipping “browns” – link here.)

Note the sportswoman above, teeing off back in 1938 on sand and desert scrub. They had it right back then, adopting the game to the place they played it. Today, there are at least seven places to play golf in Cairo, the most picturesque being the Mena House club which sits about 700 meters from the pyramid’s base (see lead image and again, below – the green fields at the top of the photo shows the Mena House course).

Not one concedes to its address, each more artificially verdant than the next.

This area is desert, inhospitable to golf-course greenery.  Everything planted requires copious amounts of irrigation, and growth chemical, weed-killer and pesticides. This is a water-starved nation in continual battle with African nations over water rights – how inappropriate is it to squander limited resources to maintain climate-incompatible recreation?

In fairness, golf is just one part of the 1,500 acre New Giza development which will also include hotels, a hospital, a university, sports club, and mixed-use areas with restaurants, shopping and offices. Almost 6,000 residential villas and apartments will be built in 10 new “neighborhoods”, each surrounded by parks and lakes. The amount of water used to support those functions will dwarf the amount the golf course will drink.

“With so many golf developments having been put on hold over the past year, it is a credit to the developers and everyone involved with New Giza that the project is moving forward,” said principal Tim Lobb. The project had kicked off in 2010, but financial restraints and political unrest sent it into hibernation.

“The site for the golf course is part of one of the most dramatic landscapes we have worked on, with incredible hilltop views to the pyramids and 50-meter-high cliffs, which have been incorporated into the golf course design.”

If only there was a push for innovation in course design; adapt the sport to local micro-climate and terrain. Create a truly unique touristic destination that screamed “Cairo” and not “St. Andrews” or “Pebble Beach”.  But no need to get my panties in a twist. Because…. if NASA has it right, the new vacation recreation for the whole of the Nile Delta may soon be scuba.

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It’s happening much faster than most climatologists thought it would: the world’s polar ice caps and ice fields are melting at an alarming rate and virtually simultaneously. It’s not a problem of giant plumes of gurgling methane. The problem of rising temperatures has brought on the “greenhouse effect”; a phenomena  caused by increased use of fossil fuels.Bridge in Greenland destroyed by melting glacier ice: N.Y. Daily News

Although the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice has been in the news more and more recently, the most startling example of  accelerating rates of melting ice fields involved Greenland’s ice sheet, comprised of giant glaciers including the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland. Unseasonably warm weather in Greenland, almost such that might be known elsewhere as “t-shirt weather”, has caused a rapid melting of the island’s ice fields in a rate unheard of since 1889.

NASA space mapping of Greenland  shows that in a mere 4 day period, from July 8 to 12, much of Greenland’s massive ice sheet has melted.

The Middle East is far removed from such areas as Greenland and other Arctic regions, as well as from cold regions in and around the world’s seventh continent, Antarctica. But far removed as it is, the Middle East will eventually be very much effected by melting polar ice – and rising seas – especially coastal regions where many Middle Eastern and Asian cities are located, including Alexandria Egypt, located at the mouth of the Nile River delta and part of that country’s most fertile farming areas.

Even a slight sea level rise of the Mediterranean could be catastrophic to the Nile Delta region as well as Mediterranean coastal cities like Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Beirut. In addition, the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, the  two straits that divide Turkey between Europe and Asia, would look a bit ‘different’.

From the south, from Antarctica, melting Antarctic ice will eventually raise sea levels in the Indian Ocean and also in the Arabian Gulf, where many coastal cities like Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Dubai are located. A 3 to 5 meter sea level rise in this region  would have devastating effects as well.

Can anything be done to reverse this trend? Some climatologists already say it may already be too late to stop or even slow down global warming. Others have theories that global warming will result in increasing acidity in the oceans, threatening marine life and the algae that manufactures much of the very oxygen we breathe.

It’s not a very pleasant scenario, any way you look at it.

Maps: NASA/The Weather Channel; N.Y. Daily News

Read more on the ravages of global warming:

Grim Greenhouse Gas Milestone Dims Hope for Less Climate Change

Acid Oceans Scare Scientists as Much as Climate Change

Giant Plumes of Gurgling Methane Could Fast-Tract Planetary  Warming

Arab World and Med Region More Vulnerable to Climate Change

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