The Nile is not only one of the longest rivers in the world, but also the lifeline of all in north-eastern Africa. But climate change could change that. The fertile delta is threatened by rising sea levels. But there are other problems.
The pharaohs worshiped it as a god, as the lifeline of Africa, but now climate change, water pollution and intensive human use are increasingly affecting the Nile. Half a billion people depend on the second longest river in the world along its entire length of 6500 kilometers, from its sources to Egypt.
“The Nile is the most important thing for us,” says 17-year-old Mohammed Dschomaa, who farms with his family on the banks of the Nile in Alty, Sudan. But in the past 50 years, its flow rate has dropped from 3,000 cubic meters to 2,830 cubic meters per second. According to forecasts by the United Nations (UNO), the amount of water could even decrease by up to 70 percent as a result of several droughts in East Africa.
Lake Victoria, the Nile’s largest source of water after rainfall, could also dry up due to drought and evaporation, among other things. Faced with such bleak scenarios, local residents are trying to curb the lake’s runoff. But according to experts, dams only accelerate the catastrophe.
In addition, for the past 60 years, the Mediterranean Sea has eroded between 35 and 75 meters of the Nile Delta every year. According to the UN, if sea levels rise by one meter, a third of this very fertile region could disappear. This could force nine million people to flee.
At the mouth of the Nile, the Damietta and Rosetta promontories that once jutted into the Mediterranean Sea in northern Egypt have disappeared. Between 1968 and 2009, the sea ate three kilometers into the Nile delta: due to the weaker current, the river could not hold back the sea, which has risen by around 15 centimeters over the past century due to climate change.
Since the construction of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s, the rich, dark sediment, which has provided a barrier to protect the country for thousands of years, has hardly got beyond southern Egypt. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), if temperatures continue to rise, the Mediterranean Sea will advance into the delta by another 100 meters per year.
This also affects the rice and maize farmers on the Nile. Salt from the Mediterranean has already seeped into much of the country, killing and weakening plants. To compensate for the salinity of the soil, farmers have to pump more fresh water from the Nile. In addition, the sediment is missing as a fertilizer. The completion of the Grand Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia could further aggravate the situation in the coming years.
According to UNEP, the Mediterranean could eventually swallow 100,000 hectares of the best agricultural land. That would be a catastrophe for Egypt, after all between 30 and 40 percent of the country’s agricultural production comes from the Nile Delta.
The situation is similar in neighboring Sudan, where half of the 45 million inhabitants live on the banks of the Nile and this covers two thirds of the water consumption. The population of both countries will double by 2050, while temperatures will rise by two to three degrees at the same time.
The function of the Nile as an energy source is also at stake: in Sudan more than half of the electricity comes from hydropower, in Uganda 80 percent. But now the people there are experiencing power cuts more and more frequently: “If the precipitation decreases, this will result in a lower hydropower potential,” says Revocatus Twinomuhangi, an expert on climate change in Kampala, Uganda. Already in the past five to ten years, “we have seen an increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts, heavy rains and floods, and heat.”