[Dialogue] The right to water

Sat Jul 28 14:57:30 EDT 2007

The right to water

Farmers across Egypt continue to face severe water shortages. Faiza
<mailto:frady at ahram.org.eg?subject=Egypt%20::%20The%20right%20to%20water>
Rady examines the plight of a community of 30,000 smallholders from the
Kishn district in Beni Sweif 

  _____  

"While the Egyptian media focusses on water shortages in Al-Daqahliya and
Kafr Al-Sheikh in the northern Nile Delta region, southern rural areas are
-- as always -- forgotten," says Mustafa Mohsen Mohamed Taha, mayor of
Al-Qodaby, a small village in the Upper Egypt governorate of Beni-Sweif. 

Located 200km south of Cairo, Al-Qodaby is one of six villages that make up
the Kishn district, home to 30,000 impoverished farmers. Water supplies to
the district are irregular and have, of late, been reduced to a trickle, say
the farmers. 

The situation may have worsened in recent months in light of the dramatic
water shortages that have affected rural areas across Egypt, but it has long
been bad. 

"In Al-Qodaby we have suffered from insufficient water supplies for 20
years. It all started when a rich landowner-turned-politician used his
position to divert one of Kishn's main irrigation canals to increase the
water supply to his own property," says Taha. 

Such thefts have cut the water supply allocated to remaining farmland by as
much as one- third, leading to an inevitable decrease in the quality and
quantity of agrarian production. "Falling production levels are compounded
by the increased salinity of the soil caused by inadequate water supplies.
Our income has shrunk accordingly and now we can barely make ends meet. We
stagger from one season to the next," explains the mayor.

In recent years things have gone from bad to worse in Al-Qodaby, say the
farmers. Not only have they lost a major canal but they have been the
victims of supply policies that favour the increasing demands of urban and
industrial consumers. "If it wasn't for the ground water that we pump out at
considerable expense our land would be barren by now," says Salah Zaki,
Al-Qodaby's sheikh.

In the village the water shortage is palpable. Though the fields of onions,
tomatoes and potatoes look deceptively lush, the subsidiary canals that
channel water from the Nile to the fields, a distance of 20km, are dry.
Village children, who would normally be jumping into the water to cool off
on hot summer days now play in the dirt, pretending it is water. They mimic
swimming in the canal. 

If the kids have managed to maintain their vitality, the farm animals appear
listless. Emaciated and dehydrated, donkeys and water buffaloes lie low
behind walls or in the shadow of trees. 

"We just don't have enough water or food for the animals, they are barely
making it," says Zaki. 

"The condition of the animals is an indication of the farmers' extreme
poverty," explains agricultural engineer Makram Shafik, who is visiting the
village from Al-Wasta, a neighbouring town. "Farmers always feed their
animals well because they are an integral part of the economy -- providing
both labour and produce. What we are witnessing here is the extent of damage
caused by shrinking water supplies." 

In the distance a lone pump irrigates a field. If and when water is
available the farmers get their supplies in turn, according to a strict
schedule that entitles them to irrigate their fields every 10 days. But
since the government cut back gas subsidies two years ago, the villagers
have had to pay ever more to run the water pumps: at LE100 per turn annual
irrigation costs per feddan now amount to LE3,600. 

"As if this isn't bad enough, the government- run cooperative no longer
supplies us with the fertilisers we need," says Taha. "Cultivating one
feddan takes six bags of fertiliser a year but the cooperative now only
sells us two bags per feddan at LE86 per bag. We get the rest from a
mushrooming black market, where prices have doubled, sometimes tripled." 

The total cost of cultivating one feddan -- even without factoring in the
costs of extra labour and land rental -- now amounts to LE4,500 annually. 

Subsidy rollbacks and soaring black market prices may hurt the farmers, but
it is the water shortage that threatens to put an end to their livelihoods.

"The lack of water kills our crops and our animals. It is very simple, our
survival as a farming community depends on water," says Zaki. 

As Al-Qodaby's farmers point out, the water crisis didn't begin with recent
media coverage. It dates back to the 1980s, and its severity is contingent
on Egypt's ongoing water management policies. 

Under the 1959 water-sharing agreement with Nile basin neighbours Egypt's
annual allocation of Nile water is 55.5 billion cubic metres (bcm). With a
population of 30 million in 1959, the country's per capita share then
amounted to some 2,100 cubic metres -- making Egyptians water-rich by
international standards. 

Since then soaring population growth, sprawling urbanisation and
state-sponsored water- intensive mega projects, have put considerable strain
on the system. With Egypt's population estimated at close to 80 million in
2006, the per capita share of water has shrunk to less than 790 cubic metres
per year. From being water- affluent in the 1950s, Egypt has slipped below
the UN's per capita water supply requirement of 1,000 cubic metres. The
World Bank describes the country system as being "under water stress". 

According to Water Resource Planning in Egypt, a paper compiled by Martin
Hvidt, the future is even bleaker. "In 2025, per capita water resources are
expected to drop to about 337 cubic meters per year. And if present [water]
management practices prevail this could mean that 60 per cent of the
agricultural land will not be irrigated."

For the impoverished farmers in Al-Qodaby, the Delta and Cairo's poorest
neighbourhoods, the future has already arrived. Yet as water shortages
slowly destroy their crops and animals, vast amounts are being pumped into
the desert, south of Aswan. The Toshka project, conceived to make the desert
bloom, is fed by one of the world's largest and most sophisticated water
pumping stations, inaugurated in 2005. Eventually it is expected to divert
10 per cent of Egypt's share of Nile water from Lake Nasser to irrigate the
country's hottest and most barren desert.

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/855/eg10.htm 

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