Rushdi Said shares his vision of an Egypt in which the desert is the new frontier and the Nile Valley is reclaimed as the nation's burgeoning garden It was exactly 60 years ago that I obtained my Masters Degree in Science from Cairo University, long before many of your parents were born. Aware of the generational gap that separates us, I will steer clear of the common practice of commencement speakers by offering advice that I know will fall on deaf ears. Instead, I will speak of the legacy that our generation has left you, and what it was that we have done to bring Egypt to the situation it is in now. The generations of your parents and grandparents have made great efforts to move Egypt forward, yet they failed in many ways to steer it in the direction they had hoped to see. One of their primary failures lay in their inability to use the natural resource base of the country judiciously. They let the cities grow -- unplanned -- into overcrowded, difficult to manage and unpleasant places in which to live. Cairo's streets are bursting with the pedestrians that roam them, let alone the immense traffic they are supposed to carry. Similar devastation has been done to our rural areas. We've allowed the urban sprawl to consume precious agricultural land. The once fertile land of Egypt is now being ruined by the proliferation of brick, stone and concrete. Legislation prohibiting the use of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes has proven futile. And so have attempts to expand cultivable land into the desert, along the fringes of the Delta and Nile Valley. The new lands have hardly compensated for the fertile old lands that were lost to urban expansion. Indeed, the economic feasibility of reclaiming desert lands for agriculture is highly controversial. Poor soil conditions, and high elevation -- which requires water lifting -- make these lands marginal at best. Philosophically, there was no justification for using the old established fertile land for urban development and the poor fringe lands for farming. Under a system of unbridled intensive use of the agricultural land, this once famed fertile land is not only shrinking in size but is also suffering from moderate to extreme degradation. Problems of topsoil erosion, salination and rising water table are causing the fertility of the land to decline. Attempts to avoid the total collapse of agriculture, which accompanied the Green Revolution of the 1950s, through the use of new strains of plants -- in particular wheat and rice -- have also met with failure. Such strains are genetically vulnerable and are often dependent on abundant water and fertilisers, neither of which can be sustained for long. Moreover, the extensive use of fertilisers is harmful to the environment, and the introduction of plants that need abundant water is a luxury that Egypt can ill afford, because of its dwindling water resources and the expected shortages that your generation will most assuredly face. The mass of population that lives today on the land of the Nile exceeds the existing carrying capacity of the system, and is not in balance with the extant pattern of resource and environment use. This lack of balance has been aggravated further by the process of industrialisation, which my generation had undertaken in the valley in order to absorb the labour supply that was entering the market in great numbers, and which could not be accommodated by agriculture alone. True, the setting up of industrial complexes near population centres provided employment to a great many people and helped raise their living standards. Yet it also exacerbated the problem of pollution, from which we were already beginning to suffer as a result of the large-scale introduction of fertilisers and insecticides in agriculture. Over-crowdedness renders impossible any improvements in agriculture, industry, tourism, or any other economic activity -- let alone take-off. Real estate becomes expensive, transportation and communications are rendered difficult and cumbersome, the environment deteriorates and the physical and mental health of the population suffers. Our generation has missed out on opening up new lands for population settlement. Egypt is endowed with vast desert areas, which could have been transformed into a new Egyptian frontier, similar to the West in the United States and Siberia in Russia. It remains up to your generation to open up this new frontier for population settlement, thereby reducing the pressure on the Valley and the Delta, and checking their degradation. Past human experience tells us that if you fail to carry out this dispersal consciously, it will happen capriciously, and in a manner that will cause great pain and disruption. Fortunately the Egyptian desert has not, as yet, been ruined totally; and this despite the best efforts of the hordes of contractors and speculators who have been squandering its limited water resources both on marginal agricultural activities and on resort development along the country's coasts. The desert is a marginal environment, the limited resources of which should be utilised only within the framework of an over-all national policy aimed at maximising their use. It will be up to your generation to draw up, and implement, just such a national policy. The desert is Egypt's last frontier. If it is lost it will have been lost forever. Let me share with you my vision of the new Egypt I would wish you to inhabit. It is an Egypt in which the Delta and the Valley have been transformed into a great garden -- a natural reserve free of industry, wholly devoted to agriculture, and inhabited by a population whose numbers enable to live in harmony with their environment, and in balance with its resources. I envision also the deserts of Egypt strewn with well-spaced and well- planned habitation centres, built around extensive industrial bases and fuelled by its energy resources. I have no doubt that there are many sceptics who will describe this vision as a pipe-dream. I nevertheless feel confident that it is a dream that your generation can accomplish. The text above is an extract from the Commencement Address delivered earlier this week by Professor Rushdi Said at the American University in Cairo. Professor Said is former head of the Egyptian Geological and Survey Authority.
