The Egyptian Economy in the Twenty-first Century by Khalid Ikram & Heba Nassar

Author:Khalid Ikram & Heba Nassar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press

6 Water Challenges and Recommended Policies

Khaled M. AbuZeid

The Present Situation

Introduction

Egypt is simply an elongated oasis in a desert, where 98 percent of the population is forced to live on only 4 percent of the land area within the Nile Valley. Egypt’s increasing population is obliged to expand development into the remaining 96 percent of desert lands away from the renewable source of water provided by the Nile River. Egypt’s limited renewable water resources represent a challenging limitation to its sustainable development. This challenge is exacerbated by the increasing water demand due to population growth and requirements for raising the standards of living, which requires additional water resources for the municipal, agriculture, industrial, and tourism sectors. The increasing upstream consumptive and non-consumptive water uses of the Nile River waters, based on unilateral decisions in the absence of a commonly agreed vision for managing the river basin, threatens peace, security, and the sustainability of the historical and existing water uses of Egypt into the future.

Per Capita Availability of Water

According to the Egyptian census, the population of Egyptians living in Egypt reached about 95 million in 2017, with an average growth rate of about 2.56 percent in the previous ten years (CAPMAS 2017).

Figure 6.1 shows the population growth from 1970 to 2020 and the impact of that on the annual per capita share of renewable water resources in Egypt. It shows that starting in the late 1980s, the annual per capita share of renewable water resources in Egypt dropped below the water scarcity threshold of 1000 cubic meters per capita, falling to 570 m3/person/year.

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