The Delta covers roughly 240 square kilometers (93 square miles), starting just north of the capital of Cairo where the Nile River fans out. The rivers’ branches created the rich, fertile land by depositing silt as they made their way to the sea. Since ancient times, the area has been the food basket of empires.
It’s heavily populated, home to some 40% of Egypt’s 104 million people and accounts for half of the country’s economy, according to the U.N. food agency. Farms and fisheries along the two Nile branches, Rosetta in the west and Damietta in the east, help feed the country and provide products for export.
All of that is increasingly threatened by climate change and rising seas. A quarter of the Delta sits at or below sea level. An increase between 0.5 and 1 meter (1.6 to 3.2 feet) — which could happen by 2100 in one of the U.N.-backed panel’s worst case scenarios — will shift the coastline inward by several kilometers, submerging large areas and rendering more barren with salt. That’s according to a recent report by an international group of scientists overseen by the Cyprus Institute’s Climate and Atmosphere Research Center and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.
“This would imply severe challenges for coastal infrastructure and agriculture, and can lead to the salinization of coastal aquifers, including the densely populated and cultivated Nile Delta,” said George Zittis, who co-authored the report.
Source: Climate change and rising seas threaten Egypt’s breadbasket – ABC News
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