To our generation, the fight for environmental sustainability is of massive importance. After all, we and our children will be the ones living (or dying) with its consequences. Most of us have never known a world where climate change - brought into being by selfish, murderous capitalist interests - wasn’t an unsteady timer hanging over our heads. We have never known a time before pollution and environmental mistreatment started reducing nature’s wonders and resources to unusable wastelands.
We’ve all witnessed the effects of pollution and climate change, two man-made evils that feed into each other in a destructive loop. My mom, who grew up in Alexandria, has always emphasized her family’s attachment to Alexandria’s beautiful beaches. Alexandria’s ocean is known for its gorgeous shades of blue, ranging from azure to arctic, as well as its strong, breathtaking waves and colorful marine life. We decided to take a beach trip there a couple of days ago, and the view we were met with… well, it was incredibly disheartening and worrisome, to say the least. The ocean’s beautiful shades of blue were overtaken by a disgusting shade of black, plastic bags and corporate wrappers littering both the water and its shoreline. Alexandria’s colors now warn of the marine-life disaster that is in the making, the subsequent blow to Alexandria’s sea-driven economy, and the hunger that will displace millions.
With the second COVID- 19 wave just around the corner, it is important to note how studies are projecting that viruses and respiratory diseases will be and even have been exacerbated by climate change. For example, recent research at Harvard University has found that people who live in places with poor air quality are more likely to die from COVID-19, despite accounting for other factors that may influence the risk of death such as pre-existing medical conditions, socioeconomic status, and access to healthcare. While air quality in Egypt is already on the decline, it will only worsen with the unmitigated effects of climate change.
According to a study by the World Resources Institute, Egypt is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, facing numerous threats to its economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Ranking as the 15th most populous country in the world, Egypt relies on the Nile River for 95% of its freshwater and the import of 40% of its food; the supply of both is threatened by climate change. Fueled by a growing population with growing demands, Egypt's already-present pressures are bound to develop into genuine crises if not quickly and decisively addressed and mitigated. These pressures include:
➔ Water Security — Global warming results in rising sea levels due to the melting of glaciers and arctic ice. Consequently, as salt water infiltrates Egypt’s low-altitude Nile Delta and other freshwater reservoirs, Egypt’s freshwater resources will decline.
➔ Food Security — Limited water and agricultural land coupled with population growth and other factors are creating mounting pressure on Egypt's ability to provide food for its people in the future. These problems will only be made worse by climate change.
➔ Energy Security — The use of unsustainable energy sources, as well as the abuse of sustainable ones, is one of the major reasons behind global environmental degradation and climate change. Unless this abuse is addressed and curtailed, Egypt will experience mass energy scarcity and rising energy prices, which will increase poverty rates, strain national budgets, and jeopardize the lives of millions of citizens.
➔ Unemployment — Egypt's youth is hungry for work in a job market that isn’t currently capable of sustaining them. With the crippling blows that climate change will deal to Egypt’s economy, this problem will only be exacerbated.
➔ The Poverty Gap — With millions of Egyptians living under the poverty line, Egypt must work to lift the standard of living for those most in need, especially in the face of climate change, which will effectively add millions more to the current numbers.
➔ The Financial Crisis — The financial effects of climate change have already made a global impact, hitting national budgets hard and impacting the availability of investment capital and development aid.
While these projections are terrifying, we are already seeing the effects of climate change on many Egyptian communities. A pressing example is those living and making a livelihood off of the Nile Delta. All along the Nile Delta, where more than half of Egypt's crops are grown, the river banks are eroding. As sea levels continue to rise, seawater is also seeping into Nile water used for irrigation, causing crops to die in dangerous quantities. Many farmers along the Nile Delta have witnessed previously fruitful patches of land become too salty to grow anything at all. Those same farmers are already struggling with waters polluted by runoff from factories. Farther up the Nile Delta, fishing villages are plagued by winter storms that have been so fierce the past two years, people there believe that God’s wrath is upon them. Inhabitants of those villages are met every year by stronger winds, higher waves, and a receding shoreline.
Recognizing the especially vulnerable position that Egypt is in, mitigation and risk-management initiatives, both on a local and national scale, have gained momentum over the past decade. Egypt is a signatory to the major UN-led climate change protocols and has implemented several government-led initiatives that seek to protect the environment or minimize damage in areas ranging from energy to waste management. For example, Egypt’s Ministry of Environment is currently working on a strategy to curb the consumption of single-use plastic bags, offering subsidies to plastic producers to build new production lines of biodegradable bags.
Along with governmental and international initiatives, several Egyptian startups focused on environmental sustainability have been founded in recent years, leading the people’s movement towards a more environmentally-conscious future. Some notable examples are: Cairo Climate Talks, a monthly Egyptian-German forum that hosts environmental discussions with policymakers around the world; Greenish, an online organization focusing on waste reduction; and Mobikya, a startup working to turn waste into usable materials.
SEKEM is one grassroots organization working to rehaul the system that bred the environmentally-harmful circumstances we are in today. SEKEM applies an approach to farming in reclaimed desert land near Cairo that emphasizes zero use of synthetic fertilizers, known as biodynamic agriculture. BDA emits fewer greenhouse gases and is more likely to lead to carbon soil sequestration– where the soil would become a carbon sink, pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it in the soil. SEKEM also maintains a “sustainability balanced scorecard system” which tracks indicators relevant to environmental challenges.
Some other local climate-saving initiatives you should check out and support are El Nafeza, an organization that employs people with disabilities to recycle agricultural waste and create paper products; Up-fuse, an organization that designs sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyle products while supporting local artisans in Egypt’s marginalized communities; and EgyEcoLand, an environmental initiative aimed at raising environmental awareness and informing Egyptians on all aspects of eco-friendly living in Egypt.
As the generation working to curb climate change, the struggle that we are up against is unfathomably large, so great it often seems impossible to beat. That being said, when the only alternative is rolling over and dying, humanity has pulled through in unprecedented shows of communal strength. I cannot stress enough the importance of supporting (maybe even starting!) grassroots and local initiatives that are for and by the Egyptian people. Egypt is our home, whether by choice or necessity, and no one is more invested in its survival than we are. Support some of the initiatives above, work for them, help hold our government accountable for the survival of its citizens. Most importantly, spread the word. Communal strength is how we beat corporal interests in favor of human lives; communal strength is how we survive climate change.
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