The Nile Delta region produces no less than 65 percent of the Egypt’s
total agricultural production. It is also part of the country’s most
densely populated regions; half of Egypt’s ever expending population
lives in this triangle of fertile land, a zone identified as one of the
world’s most vulnerable to climate change. Since the Delta’s coastal
cities are built at a very low elevation, a mere 0.5 centimeter rise in
sea level could plunge cities like Alexandria, Damietta, Rashid and Port
Said underwater, displacing millions of inhabitants from their homes
and destroying the region’s thriving agriculture. But as the sea nibbles
bits of coast, the sea water makes its way underground and invades
delta aquifers, posing an immediate threat to crops and yields.
The Nile Delta aquifer is one of the largest groundwater reservoirs
in the world. Spread over 6 million acres, it is immensely precious for
Egypt. Because sea water is denser than freshwater (one cubic meter of
sea water contains 35kg of salt), sea water easily migrates into the
aquifer, mixing with the freshwater and corrupting it.
Mosaad Kotb is the head of the Central Laboratory for Agricultural
Climate (CLAC), a central laboratory of the Agricultural Research
Center. His research unit, which focuses on the implications of climate
change on the agricultural sector, installed bathometers — PVC tubes
that measure sea level — 6 months ago along the coasts to identify the
rate of sea level increases and incursions into groundwater. “We are
starting to collect the data now, but we are aware that the results
won’t give us the solution on how to mitigate the seeping of saline
water into the aquifer in the long term,” Kotb admits.
He explains that the construction of Aswan dam in 1973 deprived the
delta of its perennial layer of silt that replenished every year with
floods and restored nutrients to the soil. “The soil compacts with time,
so this phenomenon combined with the sea level rise is extremely
alarming,” he says. Some farmers have taken matters into their own hands
by adding an extra 50-centimeter-high sand bed atop their fields to
combat rising sea levels, but the results are inconclusive.
“The sand is poor in nutrients, and needs to be sprayed consistently with fertilizers to grow anything,” Kotb explains.
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