Climate change and rising seas threaten Egypt's breadbasket
Situated on Egypt's northern coast on the Mediterranean, the Nile River Delta is one of the world's three most vulnerable hot-spots to climate change impacts. Here, the impact of climate change has long been obvious to farmers, in the creeping salt that eats away roots and cakes their fields, turning them barren.
Situated on Egypt's northern coast on the Mediterranean, the Nile River Delta is one of the world's three most vulnerable hot-spots to climate change impacts, including rising sea levels, according to a 2007 report by the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
As Egypt hosts the U.N.'s global climate summit COP27 this month, the country's leaders have said the predicament of the Delta, known for millennia for its fertile soil, is foremost among their concerns. All of that is increasingly threatened by climate change and rising seas.
Spanning several generations, they said they have sensed climate change's effects for years, particularly in rising sea levels. Saltwater intrusion is the most challenging threat to the Delta, said Mohamed Abdel Monem, a senior adviser on land and climate change with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. A decade ago, they elevated their farmlands, one field by 1 meter and the second by 2 meters, to combat rising saline water in the body of their farms.