Egypt is building an artificial river parallel to the Nile River at a cost of $5.2 billion and as part of its New Delta project. Authorities say the river will help expand agricultural land and reduc...

Egypt is building an artificial river parallel to the Nile River at a cost of $5.2 billion and as part of its New Delta project.

Authorities say the river will help expand agricultural land and reduce the need to import food and wheat.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February last year drove a global surge in wheat prices, leaving Egypt struggling as it is the world's biggest wheat importer.

Russia and Ukraine supplied Egypt with 80 per cent of its wheat imports in 2021.

Authorities have said that water for the artificial river will come from recycled agricultural drainage and groundwater.

Egypt is facing a water scarcity crisis and UNICEF has said that the country will run out of water by 2025.

In October last year, farmers in Egypt raised the alarm that social tensions would rise over the lack of water because of water shortages and climate change.

Yesterday, news circulated that Egypt's annual inflation rate hit a record high in June at 36.8 per cent, as the country continues to grapple with a severe economic crisis.

Egyptians have been grappling with price rises for months and many citizens are struggling to buy basic food products like fruit and meat due to rising inflation.

Activists have criticised the Egyptian government for pouring money into what have become known as vanity projects across the country as the economy continues to spiral.

One of the biggest of these projects is the multi-million-dollar New Administrative Capital being built 50 kilometres from Cairo on a patch of desert.

Even though the government presented the capital as a development that would make Cairo greener, rights groups have said that the waste produced, and the energy and water used, could have been better spent on creating infrastructure to tackle climate change.

  • BlueMagaChud [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Didn't Egypt provide the majority of wheat production for the roman empire? Why are they now the largest importer? I assume it's climate change related, but that's quite a reversal.

    • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah Climate Change and Desertification are the reasons I've always seen

      Towards the end of the third century CE, multiple formerly thriving farming villages at the edges of the district went into decline and were eventually abandoned. This paper presents a new perspective on causes of this abandonment by synthesizing existing research. The papyri as well as the archaeological record imply that irrigation problems arising simultaneously from the third century CE lay at the heart of the problem and led to the progressive desertification of formerly agricultural land. The surviving documentation allows us to trace what increasing water stress meant on the ground for the local population and what adaption strategies they undertook to deal with the degradation and desertification of their farmlands. While socio-economic factors certainly played a role in the decline of these settlements, a change in environmental conditions should be considered as well. In fact, natural proxies record a general shift in East African Monsoon patterns at the source areas of the Nile and consecutively lower Nile flood levels from the beginning of the third century on.

      https://online.ucpress.edu/SLA/article-abstract/4/4/486/115851/Climate-Change-in-the-Breadbasket-of-the-Roman?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://www.jstor.org/stable/4238709