At an economic development conference in Sharm el-Sheikh from March 13-15th, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi sought further investment from the international community to jump-start his country’s stagnant economy. Thanks to a string of revolutions, not to mention the coup that brought Sisi to power, Egypt’s government has changed a number of times over the past few years, making it difficult for any economic agenda to take hold. Additionally, years of corruption and mismanaged subsidy programs, coupled with a lack of investment in job creation, have left the state reeling.

While immediate investment to help stimulate the economy is needed, it could turn out to be the least of Egypt’s worries, as yet another potentially catastrophic event continues to linger on the horizon. That challenge, which is rapidly becoming inescapable, is the sinking of the Nile Delta as a result of climate change – an event that could plummet the Egyptian economy into irreversible devastation.



Just take Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city, where 40 percent of the country’s industry is housed. A one-half meter rise in sea level would force 1.5 million people to evacuate and almost 200,000 jobs would be lost. This would also have disastrous effects on the tourism industry, which accounts for 12.6 percent of employment.

Some of the peripheral effects of such a drastic climate change event result from the rising salinity of coastal water. This water is crucial to Egypt’s agricultural sector, which makes up 29 percent of the jobs and nearly 15 percent of the national gross domestic product. Some farmers in the region are suffering from underground salinity that is destroying the soil and making the land significantly less fertile. Poor soil has forced farmers to utilize waste water to irrigate their land and spend a significant portion of their resources to purchase expensive fertilizers to even just produce minimal outputs.

In the past, the annual Nile floods would inundate the Delta with fresh water that washed away salt water from the Mediterranean. However, after the construction of the Aswan Dam in 1970, these floods ceased altogether.

