WATANI International
26 September 2010
With the Nile Valley and Delta choking on Egypt’s exploding population, can any use be made out of the country’s huge desert areas?
In his introduction to his new book Mammar al-Tanmiya wal- Taameer…Wassila li-Ta’meen Mustaqbal al-Agyal al-Qadima fi Misr (Passage of Development and Reconstruction … A Way to Safeguard the Future of Generations in Egypt) , Farouk al-Baz, the Egyptian-American scientist and research professor and director of the Centre for Remote Sensing at Boston University, writes: “I began to study Egyptian deserts 30 years ago. I believe they could help provide a decent life for the densely populated nation. The Nile Valley and the Delta have become too narrow to absorb the growing population. The current imbalance has created huge problems, including contaminated food and over-crowded schoolrooms, not to mention threats to the environment. We have to look for alternatives capable of attracting large numbers of people to new areas outside the narrow strip of the Nile Valley. They might include Sinai and the Western and Eastern deserts.”
Need for major development
Dr al-Baz goes on to say: “The Egyptian population has been steadily growing at a time when job opportunities are limited. The result is stagnation in production and a retreat in Egypt’s standing among nations. It is hardly sufficient, given the depth of the problem, to establish a new city here or to pave a road there. Rather, there is a dire need to formulate a comprehensive plan to open up new horizons for the Nile Delta, Upper Egypt and Nubia. The scheme aims to benefit from the strip adjacent to the Nile Valley, which represents an important component of Egypt’s natural wealth.”
Dr al-Baz believes it is about time to put into action a project proposed some 20 years ago to enhance development prospects in the Western Desert plateau. The scheme includes five main components. First, establishing a 1,200-kilometre highway starting near al-Alamein and ending at the southern border of Egypt. Second, building 12 roads with a combined length of 1,200 kilometres with the purpose of linking the highway to the newly-created residential areas. The project’s third component is to extend a railway parallel to the highway. The fourth would be to pipe water from Lake Nasser to the end of the highway off the Mediterranean coast, providing fresh water for the communities along the highway. Finally, power lines would be established to supply the clean and renewable energy necessary for future development project.
Where’s the water?
When it comes to the scheme’s economic feasibility, Dr al-Baz says that the project should not be executed haphazardly, but according to priorities that guarantee that people receive the benefits as fast as possible. It makes no sense, therefore, that the construction of the highway starts from the north—which is far away from densely-populated areas in the Nile Valley and the Delta—to the south. On the contrary, the priority should be given to the area’s neighbouring villages and cities to allow for constructional expansion towards the west. When it comes to finance, Dr al-Baz proposes that the domestic private sector take the lead, followed by Arab and foreign investments.
However Rushdi Said, the former head of the Egyptian Geological Survey, has a different outlook. The renowned geologist indicated that the development passage did not have a single drop of water, and ground water in the region is too limited for such a project to be established. “The only way out of this situation is to found a giant industrial base outside the valley to attract people to move. If the idea of taking the extension of highways and railroads as the basis of development plans had proved successful in the United States, it has nothing to do with the Egyptian case,” he concluded.
Thorough study
Ismail Serageddin, the Director of Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the former World Bank vice-president for environmental affairs, displays a similar reservation. He stresses the need for a thorough feasibility study since a host of passage development schemes have proved inefficient. Dr Serageddin called for investigating experiences of the kind so as to judge the validity of the idea and the factors behind the failure of similar schemes. “It should be taken into account that some of these projects failed because they focused on a single purpose which never materialised, such as getting people to move to less-populated locations. New towns such as 6 October succeeded because of their closeness to already existing urban centres. Others, including 10th of Ramadan, Sadat and cities in the New Valley, stumbled and failed to introduce a change regarding the population map in Egypt,” he said. “The public sector’s role has to be accurately estimated as the success of the new project largely depends on the availability of Arab and foreign investments. Meanwhile, monopolies should be confronted because allowing them to dominate would be detrimental to people’s opportunities to fully benefit from the project.”
Horizontal passages
In a telephone conversation with Watani Mahound Abu-Zeid, chairman of the Arab Water Council and former Minister of Water Resources, emphasised the need for the development and construction as a way to offer Egyptians an outlet form the overcrowded, overloaded Nile Valley and Delta. In Dr Abu Zeid’s view, among the factors favouring the scheme is the limited quantities of water it requires. “Since it is an industrial project in the first place, the development passage would not consume overly large quantities of water. Although ground water in the area is not abundant, it could be used side by side with fresh water channelled by water pipelines from the Nile. In general, water resources are limited in Egypt and they are expected to diminish over the following decades. Given the relevance of the passage in terms of attracting large numbers of people, a national apparatus should be established to carry out the project expected to take 20 years”, he concluded.
Economic expert Mukhtar al-Sharif argued for focusing on the horizontal passages between the east and west, since they could allow for future constructional expansion towards the west and alleviate pressure on densely populated areas. Dr Sharif finds it of utter significance to accurately estimate the costs, since this is a major factor determining the soundness of the project.