For thousands of years, annual Nile floods deposited mud, sand and minerals that replenished the Delta and prevented erosion. But for the past three decades, the Aswan Dam has curbed the sediment from resettling in the Delta and allowed erosion to flourish.
"The sediment created a balance. Now the coastal processes are acting alone without sediments counteracting, and the balance has been changed," said Omran Frihy, a retired coastal researcher in Alexandria who has published several reports on sea level rise and erosion.
In Egypt, as in much of Africa, global warming is rarely discussed. But the government in Cairo is beginning to confront the problem.
In Alexandria, authorities are spending US$300 million to build concrete sea walls to protect the beaches along the Mediterranean, Frihy said. Sand is being dumped in some areas to replenish dwindling beaches.
Similar walls are going up in other parts of the coast including Rashid, where archaeologists in 1799 discovered the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the secrets of ancient Egyptian writing.
The government is also preparing a "national strategy study" on ways to adapt to climate change, said Maged George, Egypt's minister of environmental affairs.
Mohamed el-Shahawy, a climate scientist at the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, said the government was obtaining a vulnerability index and detecting the most vulnerable regions.
"Egypt is trying to protect its shores," el-Shahawy said. "After this we will request that the world help. We have to protect ourselves. But it costs so much.
On the Net
Maps of predicted sea level rise affect on Nile Delta: maps.grida.no/go/graphic/potential_impact_of_sea_leve l_rise_nile_delta
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