Trouble ahead there may well be, but Nashwa Abdel-Tawab could barely conceal her joy while the worst of Lake Nasser's pollution was being dealt with Ghalia, 27, wakes up at five every morning to work with her husband Ibrahim. Together they cultivate the small plot of land they were granted by the government on the shores of Lake Nasser -- the largest freshwater reservoir in the world (480km long and 16km across at its widest point), which provides most of Egypt's drinking water and to which the Aswan High Dam gave way in 1972 -- using labour-intensive "shoreline agriculture". The load is heavier now that they have an animal husbandry project. All day she toils, resting for four hours during the worst of the sun, then resuming till evening. In the house is a hardwood bed without a mattress, and during those four hours it doubles as a dining table: beans, rice, onions and watermelon are the staples. Ghalia is illiterate, and she has no time for the alphabet. She doesn't even have time for basic cooking and cleaning, let alone quality time with her family, two members of whom -- her eldest son and daughter -- are at Sohag University further north, where they live with her mother-in-law; separation from them distresses her, but she hardly gets to care for the other two: a 12-year-old who, having never learned to read and write, helps with the work; and a three-year-old who, dragged around in the desert, is largely neglected and exposed not only to the legendary Aswan sun, but to venomous creepy-crawlies as well. Ghalia's life, in short, is no fun, what with erratic electricity, an unhealthy diet and pointedly uncomfortable living conditions. Her family can look forward to neither schooling nor proper healthcare. She is perpetually tired, unclean, in a bad mood and separated from her two eldest children. What on earth is she doing here? "We settled here with the family in hopes of better income and status," she smiles, "because we could become landowners having been hired peasants. And now it's been 10 years we're inhabitants and it feels like paradise." Really, now? The funny thing is that, while she offers me a plate of watermelon in the shade of the house, Ghalia sounds convinced of what she's saying, and yet the dirt floor is scorpion ridden and there are any number of huge flies clinging to the bigger slice. The only thing that looks safe is the water -- which came from the lake, where Ghalia also washes and doubtless disposes of some waste. Unlike the Nubians, who have always lived in harmonious rhythm with the Nile, her tribe of settlers -- migrant workers who spend their holidays in Sohag and other provinces which they call home, much like those Egyptian city- dwellers employed in the Gulf -- are polluting the reservoir, and it's hard to convince them of the problem in the light of their own lives being so hard. In fact, Ghalia is but a small part of the government plan to settle one million people in the (reclaimed) desert surrounding Lake Nasser, a process that is ongoing till 2017. The programme had a mixed reception, but no one disagrees that the settlers are particularly vulnerable to hardship, nor that their presence will have adverse implications for the environment. For three years now the non- profit Near East Foundation (NEF) has attempted to provide relief in three village communities west of the lake, working closely with representative members and especially decision- makers, in order to encourage an ecological approach to agriculture, value-added production and niche marketing as well as ways to mitigate environmental threats to health. An arid desert plateau along the Tropic of Cancer, the vicinity of Lake Nasser is not fertile land but its proximity to the water and the climate make it ideal for agricultural development; what has only recently registered is evidence that pollution undermines sustainable livelihood in the area, with drops in the water level from silt accumulation reducing the fish population and impurities making the water less and less usable over time. According to High Dam Authority Chairman Ibrahim Moussa, speaking at the NEF conference which concluded the first three-year phase of the project, the aim is "to open up opportunities for young people to work around the lake, moving out of the overpopulated [Nile] Valley and defying unemployment". For her part the UN World Food representative Suzanne Kamel explained that ecological concerns are integrated: "we built model villages, and the infrastructure should be completed shortly, and we provided each family with five feddans of land at the 182m mark, above the water level, to maximise production." But on the other hand environmentalists like Abdel-Fattah El-Qassass and Samir Ghabbour have sought to declare the Lake Nasser shoreline a protected area, thereby limiting both settlement and development. "The lake will end up being polluted both by shoreline agriculture and through the wells used for irrigation," Ghabbour, Cairo University professor of African Studies , explained. "We can't force settlers to leave, but we have to prevent others from coming in. We also have to provide ecological training." In Toshka, Ghabbour went on, there are some 500,000 feddans waiting to be cultivated with all the infrastructure provisions needed for a good life; Lake Nasser, better used for environmental tourism, birdwatching and crocodile nurseries, at present only has 300 feddans to offer at a tremendous cost to the ecosystem. While the two views stand at opposite ends of the spectrum, there remains the fact of the settlers, who started to move to the area unofficially in 1993 and were officially sanctioned and encouraged as of 1997; efforts are now being channelled towards settling newcomers as far away from the shore as possible and moving existing settlers into model villages. According to Ahmed Farouk, the NEF project manager, "we have two problems and one strategic aim: human settlements and government plans for development. On the one hand the plans pose ecological threats; on the other hand, scrapping them means the area will never be developed." Since the human factor is constant, Farouk argued, improving the environmental habits of the settlers is the only eventual way out of pollution. Hence, the only solution: to encourage resettlement while simultaneously protecting the environment. Three years ago the Cairo-based NEF Development Services Centre had received a $2.2 million Canadian International Development Research Centre (CIDRC) grant for agricultural development of reclaimed desert west of Lake Nasser, with a special supplement providing for training and market research from the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. The monies covered the first phase, which ended a month ago: 2,500 small landholding families in the three target villages (Bashaer Al-Kheir, Garf Hussein and Kalabsha, to which President Hosni Mubarak paid a visit two months ago) now, thanks to an ecologically sustainable programme, have better incomes and a higher standard of life. According to Farouk, the link between the environment and human health has been emphasised: "health goes far beyond biology to encompass not only economy and the socio-political system but ecology as well, and we have sought to raise awareness of the link. With a large production capacity of up to 800,000 seedlings a year, on an area of 640 sq m, the Kalabsha vegetable nursery is a case in point, producing improved varieties of 15 crops. Farouk says that, though it doesn't meet the farmers' needs, the nursery solves major problems -- seedlings can grow in May and June, when water is scarce; they are more resilient to transportation and birds; and they are particularly suited to the locale -- and should be supplemented with others. Doubling as a research project, the nursery ensures the farmers' access to the most suitable strains of plants and the most effective methods, including pesticides and fertilisers. Other achievements of phase one were listed in the conference, together with plans subsumed within phase two. Towards the south, for example, another programme is currently helping settled farmers maximise the value of newly reclaimed land they have been cultivating. According to one of the beneficiaries, Fahmi Fahmi, a farmer from Borolos, "we used to plant haphazardly; now we have the nursery and veterinarian caravans. For those of us in more remote areas we also have first-aid workshops; the Canadian ambassador, Philip MacKinnon, gave us first- aid kits." For his part, Farouk believes the government should give farmers ownership of the land rather than "right of use" per se, to encourage belonging, commitment and permanent settlement, which would provide for safeguarding the ecosystem. The government should extend amenities like running water, electricity, communications and schooling to places where they are not available to further encourage settlement. Along those lines, the NEF is developing awareness programmes, to be extended to resettlement areas throughout the country with involvement from local communities, the public and private sectors as well as NGOs and international organisations. Indeed the impact of NEF work was clear in Aswan: aware of rights and obligations, they now speak the language of the market and have a clear sense of the environment. Sibai Zidane, an older farmer from Esna, explained how he has been in touch with researchers through agricultural and ecological meetings in which marketing, management, fund raising and sustainability are the name of the game. "In Garf Hussein," his village, "we have obtained funding for our latest project from Switzerland." AND YET the results of the IDRC ecological health study on Kalabsha, Garf Hussein and Bashaer Al-Kheir, announced at the conference, prove alarming. According to Samia Barsi, Suez Canal University biologist-geologist and the 36- strong team leader, "there are symptoms of tropical and renal diseases as well as malnutrition. Weak immunity is likely to result in a negative response to regionally recurrent epidemics like malaria and cholera." This latter last broke out in 1947, claiming 10,000 lives in Egypt; and Barsi is concerned that, with allagae, ineffective sewerage, unclean drinking water and fertilisers in the heat, it may make a comeback. "The threat of malaria too is partly dependent on environmental conditions, with fluctuating water levels providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes. The last outbreak," she adds, "was in 1944, in Aswan and Qena." More recently, in 1977 and again in 1993, "top-of-the-line" diseases like rift valley fever -- which is transmitted from animals to mosquitoes and onto humans and can result in blindness -- hit Aswan; this is all the more risky since Aswan is a major stop on the Sudan-to- Egypt camel route, and camels are known carriers of the virus. Not to mention bird flu, which is particularly relevant with 125 migrant species in Lake Nasser, many of which the local fishermen use for food. Of 36 cases thus far reported in Egypt, three were found in Aswan. Insects in the area have yet to be analysed, but lake water proved clean enough, although the same could not be said for samples from homes: "the problem could be with storage tanks or the filtration system; the root cause of pollution should be researched." As for the human element, mobile healthcare units tested some 700 men, women and children, taking into account factors like activity, nutrition and the surrounding environment, with a whole range of institutions contributing experience and know-how, from High Dam Authority's GIS department to the Ministry of Agriculture, departments of the South Valley and Suez Canal universities and the Aswan Health Directorate. GIS yielded digitised maps of the villages, roads and major activity points to support decisions about the placement not only of people but hospitals, schools, fire stations, roads, weather events, the impact of natural disasters and more. As Barsi put it, "I hope policies can be combined effectively to safeguard this part of Egypt, especially its younger generation and those newly settled here, against not only epidemics but, perhaps even more importantly, their own adverse environmental habits. Research has identified the main threats and risks and how they affect human health. But research is not enough: government action must supplement it." Under threat AND YET the results of the IDRC ecological health study on Kalabsha, Garf Hussein and Bashaer Al-Kheir, announced at the conference, prove alarming. According to Samia Barsi, Suez Canal University biologist-geologist and the 36- strong team leader, "there are symptoms of tropical and renal diseases as well as malnutrition. Weak immunity is likely to result in a negative response to regionally recurrent epidemics like malaria and cholera." This latter last broke out in 1947, claiming 10,000 lives in Egypt; and Barsi is concerned that, with allagae, ineffective sewerage, unclean drinking water and fertilisers in the heat, it may make a comeback. "The threat of malaria too is partly dependent on environmental conditions, with fluctuating water levels providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes. The last outbreak," she adds, "was in 1944, in Aswan and Qena." More recently, in 1977 and again in 1993, "top-of-the-line" diseases like rift valley fever -- which is transmitted from animals to mosquitoes and onto humans and can result in blindness -- hit Aswan; this is all the more risky since Aswan is a major stop on the Sudan-to- Egypt camel route, and camels are known carriers of the virus. Not to mention bird flu, which is particularly relevant with 125 migrant species in Lake Nasser, many of which the local fishermen use for food. Of 36 cases thus far reported in Egypt, three were found in Aswan. Insects in the area have yet to be analysed, but lake water proved clean enough, although the same could not be said for samples from homes: "the problem could be with storage tanks or the filtration system; the root cause of pollution should be researched." As for the human element, mobile healthcare units tested some 700 men, women and children, taking into account factors like activity, nutrition and the surrounding environment, with a whole range of institutions contributing experience and know-how, from High Dam Authority's GIS department to the Ministry of Agriculture, departments of the South Valley and Suez Canal universities and the Aswan Health Directorate. GIS yielded digitised maps of the villages, roads and major activity points to support decisions about the placement not only of people but hospitals, schools, fire stations, roads, weather events, the impact of natural disasters and more. As Barsi put it, "I hope policies can be combined effectively to safeguard this part of Egypt, especially its younger generation and those newly settled here, against not only epidemics but, perhaps even more importantly, their own adverse environmental habits. Research has identified the main threats and risks and how they affect human health. But research is not enough: government action must supplement it."
