SUBSCRIBE NOW

SIGHT

Be informed. Be challenged. Be inspired.

Postcards: Egypt erects sand barriers as rising sea swallows the Nile Delta

Egypt sand dykes1

MENNA A FAROUK, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on hopes low-cost sand dykes can help hold back the Mediterranean Sea and protect the homes and incomes of people in Egypt’s breadbasket…

Mastroua, Egypt
Thomson Reuters Foundation

The flooding had become inevitable. Every winter, amid heavy rains and storms, the Mediterranean Sea would rise and spill over into fisherman Aziz Lasheen’s low-lying village in Egypt’s northern governorate of Kafr El-Sheikh.

As water poured into the village of Mastroua it would destroy homes, saturate farmland with saltwater and cover the road Lasheen and others walked to reach their fishing boats.

“As fishermen and farmers, we were scared to go to work as the rising water covered up the shore. The tide was so high,” the 33-year-old said.

That meant his income dropped by 70 per cent every winter. “During that time of the year, I used to use my savings to afford my family’s needs,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But this past winter, Lasheen had no need to break into his savings, after the construction of a series of low-cost natural dykes to keep the surging waters away from his village during more and more violent storms along the Mediterranean coast.

Egypt sand dykes1

Sand dykes being built across the shores of the Nile Delta to protect coastal communities from flooding, in Kafr El-Sheikh governorate, Egypt, 2019. PICTURE: Courtesy of UNDP

Egypt, the host of November’s COP27 UN climate conference, is scaling up efforts to cushion the densely populated Nile Delta against the increasingly intense flooding that plagues low-lying areas around the world.

As part of a broader $US105-million coastal management project led by the United Nations Development Programme, the government is building a system of sand dykes along the shores of the Nile Delta to hold back the sea during stormy weather.

“Without the current coastal protection work, the coastal areas are vulnerable to flooding. The seawater will flood these lands during storms and disrupt farming activities; farmers would lose the season’s crops, which is catastrophic for them.”

– Mohamed Bayoumi, a climate change specialist with UNDP in Egypt.

Stretching over nearly 70 kiloemtres, the dyke system covers five governorates recognised as flooding hotspots – Kafr El-Sheikh, Beheira, Dakahlia, Damietta and Port Said.

The aim is to save the homes and livelihoods of 250,000 Nile Delta residents, said Mohamed Bayoumi, a climate change specialist with UNDP in Egypt.

Launched in 2019, the seven-year project has funding from the Green Climate Fund and the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation. So far, nearly 70 per cent of the system has been built, Bayoumi said in emailed comments.

“Without the current coastal protection work, the coastal areas are vulnerable to flooding,” he said.

“The seawater will flood these lands during storms and disrupt farming activities; farmers would lose the season’s crops, which is catastrophic for them.”

But some climate experts warn the dykes will only push the problem elsewhere, sending excess water from the protected areas along the Mediterranean coast to the rest of the Nile Delta, which fans out between the cities of Alexandria and Port Said.

“Protecting only the lowlands of the Nile Delta will turn them into small islands in the long term and will largely affect nearby lands and communities,” said Abbas Sharaky, professor of geology and water resources at Cairo University.

“The whole area should be protected because the whole Nile Delta region is endangered by climate change, not only the lowlands,” he said.



Since the dykes were built near his village last year, Lasheen said life has returned to normal, with fishermen again making a steady income and farmers back to growing crops such as tomatoes and potatoes.

“It is a relief for us now after spending years under stress, struggling to make ends meet,” he said.

Egypt sand dykes2

Sand dykes being built across the shores of the Nile Delta to protect coastal communities from flooding, in Kafr El-Sheikh governorate, Egypt, 2019. PICTURE: Courtesy of UNDP

As rising temperatures cause the world’s ice sheets to melt faster and the ocean to warm and expand, coastal communities face more frequent flooding and harsher storms that drive powerful seawater surges inland, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a 2019 report.

Home to about a quarter of Egypt’s population, according to the UNDP, the Nile Delta – known as Egypt’s breadbasket – contributes about 20 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product through agriculture, industry and fishing.

A government report released last year pointed to rising sea levels and flooding among various factors that could cause wheat production in Egypt to drop by 15 per cent and rice production to fall by 11 per cent by 2050.

As it tries to stop that from happening, the government is turning to low-cost dykes designed to look like natural dunes.

Made out of beach sand brought inland, the barriers are planted with reeds and local vegetation to help boost biodiversity and encourage them to grow bigger and stronger by trapping blown sand.


We rely on our readers to fund Sight's work - become a financial supporter today!

For more information, head to our Subscriber's page.


In that way, they also help combat erosion, another major factor in increased flooding in the delta, said Jan Dietrich, a project team leader at Danish engineering consultancy NIRAS.

Dietrich heads up another part of the UNDP initiative, Egypt’s integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) plan.

The plan, “one of the most extensive of its kind in the world,” he said, involves a range of projects – including a new sea level monitoring system – to address flooding, saltwater intrusion, erosion and other problems.

Since the first stage of construction on the Aswan High Dam was completed across the Nile in 1964, less sediment has travelled downriver to naturally fortify the Mediterranean coast, allowing the sea to creep further inland, Dietrich said.

Amid worries the new sand barriers could also be vulnerable to erosion, UNDP’s Bayoumi said the Shore Protection Authority will be in charge of maintaining the dyke system across Egypt.

The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation did not respond to requests for comment.

Egypt sand dykes3

The dyke system is the latest in a series of projects by the Shore Protection Authority since its establishment in 1981, mainly using structures such as jetties, seawalls and breakwaters to protect the Nile Delta and coastal cities like Alexandria.

Egypt’s cultural hub, Alexandria has been named by the World Economic Forum as one of 11 “sinking cities” – along with Lagos in Nigeria and Venice, Italy – expected to be underwater by 2100 if climate change isn’t curbed.

But Sharaky, the Egyptian water resources expert, said in his view Egypt has so far been using only temporary solutions to try to hold back the sea.

If it wants to save its flood-vulnerable communities, it needs to look beyond its borders and cooperate with other countries to cut climate-changing emissions and plan more sustainably.

“These [flood prevention] projects have been successful in protecting their areas, but the sustainability of their success is not guaranteed without an integrated plan that reduces carbon dioxide emissions and increases usage of green energy,” he said.

“These are places that are expected to disappear entirely and this needs a major national and global plan to salvage them.”

 

Donate



sight plus logo

Sight+ is a new benefits program we’ve launched to reward people who have supported us with annual donations of $26 or more. To find out more about Sight+ and how you can support the work of Sight, head to our Sight+ page.

Musings

TAKE PART IN THE SIGHT READER SURVEY!

We’re interested to find out more about you, our readers, as we improve and expand our coverage and so we’re asking all of our readers to take this survey (it’ll only take a couple of minutes).

To take part in the survey, simply follow this link…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.