Egypt’s water balancing act

ABSTRACT

Egypt’s 2007 National Water Resources Plan projected that water supply and demand would still be in balance by 2017. However, in 2010, the National Water Resources Plan – Coordination Project found that agricultural demands were far higher than previously estimated and demand already exceed the officially available resources. The first part of this paper deals with the estimation of the Nile water balance in 2010; the second discusses measures, including actions in the wider economy, that would allow Egypt to manage the situation and cohabit with its co-riparians as they implement their own plans to use Nile waters.

KEYWORDS:

• national water management
• water balance
• water in the national economy (WINE)
• Egypt

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This was led by the author for the first two years.

2. For the main report of the NWRP and relevant technical reports, see the WOCAT network (https://wocatpedia.net/wiki/Portal:Library_-_Publications_and_Good_Practices).

3. Flows arriving at Aswan, corrected for abstraction and losses in Sudan. The KGW extension is based on estimates prepared by Kevin Wheeler (personal communication).

4. This was signed to meet a benchmark for release of funds by USAID under the Matching Irrigation Supply and Demand programme, but does not have the force of law.

5. Updated using construction cost indices (Engineering News Record, 2021).

6. Measurements from Howell et al. (1988, p. 51).

7. If the British bouncing bomb attacks had succeeded in breaching dams in the Ruhr in the Second World War, they would have caused a 200-year flood. Nevertheless, water levels had to be drawn down because of cracking, reducing hydropower output.

8. At present Sudan is abstracting only about 16.9 bcm of its share of 17.5 bcm.

9. Countries on the World Population Prospects database for which there are 25 years of records of TFRs starting around 3.0, the current rate in Egypt (UN, 2020).

10. Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey and Western Sahara.

11. For a discussion, see https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/environment/arctic-shipping-routes-new-suez-canal/.