Participants at a meeting held in preparation of the launch of the Arab Climate Resilience Initiative have warned against the negative impacts of climate change on Arab countries, particularly Egypt. At the conference, hosted yesterday by the National Water Research Council (NWRC) in association with the Arab League and the United Nations Development Program, participants warned that parts of the Egyptian Delta region will be submerged due to rising sea levels, forcing millions to evacuate. They agreed that Arab coastal areas will be most affected by climate changes, given the huge number of inhabitants located there, accounting for 50 percent of the population of the whole Arab region. NWRC's president Shaden Abdel Gawwad said the major problem in addressing climate change is the lack of information and coordination between concerned entities. Physical detriments to the environment, according to Gawwad, include a large area of farmland lost due to coastal erosion and oil salinity, and sea water mingling with underground water storage in the northern Delta. She revealed that developments in water salinity and movement in coastal areas are currently being monitored in a bid to determine the climate changes Egypt is experiencing. She added that studies on the social, economic, and financial impacts of climate change are currently being conducted. Mustafa Tolba, an environmental expert, said that rising earth temperatures will further speed up the negative impact of climate change, which will lead to flooding in several areas, including the Delta region, in the case of ice in the Arctic Ocean melting. According to Tolba, such a crisis will render many farmers jobless. Tolba urged the Egyptian government not to underestimate the danger posed by rising sea levels, stressing the need for practical plans to protect endangered areas in the northern Delta. Meanwhile, Essam Heggi, a NASA expert, said Egypt does not have strategies in place for handling potential climatic changes. He predicted that water from the Mediterranean will merge with fresh underground water in the Delta region. But, he said, the most serious consequence of climate change lies in the changes in maritime traffic through the Suez Canal in favor of the more navigable parts of the Arctic Ocean. Heggi expects 2500 square kilometers of farmland to suffer from deteriorating productivity over the next 25 years due to climate changes. He suggested establishing a common database between Egypt and other Arab states in a bid to develop projects that will help alleviate the impact of such a decrease in productivity on investments in industry, agriculture, and tourism. Mohamed al-Raei, professor of environment at Alexandria University, also warned that flooding of sea water will result in the salination of the Delta soil, as well as subjecting the area to sandstorms and dust storms that usually accompany high temperatures. Al-Raei noted that Egypt is among the countries most affected by climate changes, whose negative consequences, he said, are already apparent in the rate of depression of some land in Alexandria, which currently stands at five millimeters annually. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
