Egypt: Striking A Balance

by Aimee Gross

Unfortunately, Egypt is not alone. Many Sub-Saharan African, Asian, and South American countries are experiencing the same dilemma: whether to develop quickly into "modern" industrial nations or feed the growing population or to save the environment. These two concerns need not be mutually exclusive, but pressures from overpopulation often mandate the faster route, with disastrous local and global repercussions.

The Environment: Pushed Aside

Neither Egypt nor any other developing country possesses a perverse desire to decimate its natural resources. Environmental concerns, however, often get lost in the rush to develop higher agricultural yields to feed the million new mouths each year, and to develop industries to satisfy both the internal need for goods and the need for exports. Ultimately, many countries adopt quick-fix solutions and pass "band-aid" legislative afterthoughts to appease alarmed environmentalists, population scientists and geologists. In Egypt, environmental laws are largely ignored, breeding cynicism and hopelessness among Egyptians. Law 48, which was passed in 1982, bans the dumping of industrial waste, trash, and sewage into the Nile. Despite this law, the dumping continues today, polluting the principal source of fresh water in a country whose land is 96 percent desert. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, Cairo’s air contains the highest levels of particulate matter and lead in the world. Other major pollutants far exceed United States standards and limits set by the World Health Organization. An ominous brown cloud hangs over Cairo almost every day. in southern suburbs, cement dust covers anything exposed to the elements. Efforts to relocate cement factories and other industrial facilities to satellite cities outside Cairo, with a population of 16 million, have caused a jump in the already high numbers of cars in Cairo (about one million) and created terrible traffic jams. Clearly, it is not easy to strike a balance between appeasing the demands of an expanding population and caring for the environment.

An International Concern

In September 1994, the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo met to address concerns about the environment, the economy, trade, and education around the globe. Maher Mahran, Egypt’s Minister of Population and Family Welfare, said the conference had done 80 percent of its job simply by drawing attention to, and providing information on, world population. Many people in the international community, however, criticize these programs because they fail to produce concrete, tangible results. Expressing a view that many share, Rachel Kyte, an analyst for the International Women’s Health Coalition, states, "What these conferences do is take an aerial snapshot of where we’re at. A document like the program of action lets donor countries base policies on it, or go ahead of it if they want."

At the conference, a group of developing countries including Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Egypt criticized Western nations for interfering in their economic growth by forcing ideas of democracy, environmental protocol, and acceptable population growth on them. Mahbub-ul Haq, a former Pakistani finance minister and now an advisor for the United Nations Development Program, says the world’s primary problem is population growth and patterns of consumption in rich nations, not population increases in developing nations. "Let us recognize clearly that rapid population growth in developing countries is their national problem, not a global issue," he wrote in April in Earth Times, an environmental periodical. This sentiment illustrates one of the complications that threatens to undermine efforts to preserve our global environment. This sort of tunnel vision only skirts the real issue: how to preserve the health of our collective global ecosystem.

Pollution in the Nile, the Ganges, or the Amazon eventually affects us all. The Earth is a closed system: Our limited quantities of air, land, and water are recycled again and again. Lester R. Brown, president of the Washington based Worldwatch Institute, points out that world food supplies are threatened as the supply of water is drained to its limits, seas are over fished, and agricultural land in some of the poorest and most densely populated nations is turned over to industry. The UN projects that arable land scarcity could affect 918 million people or as many as three billion people living in 26 to 37 countries in 2025. Robert Engelman, director of Population Action International’s population and environment program notes, "Scarcity of arable land has the biggest impact on Africa, where farmers are least able to afford fertilizers and other means to boost agricultural production." He states that while African farmers have increased their productivity, it is not enough to keep up with the continent’s three percent annual rate of population growth. Farmers would need to employ expensive farming techniques, such as inorganic nitrogen fertilizers, to reclaim the land that has already been poisoned by harmful pesticides and fertilizers. Scarcity of arable land is also compounded by a lack of water. Egypt is a "water scarce" nation, having less than 1,000 cubic meters of renewable fresh water per person available for farming, industry, and household purposes each year. Egyptians, desperate to increase agricultural yields and to reduce unemployment rates, are trying to coax the earth into fruitfulness with fertilizers and overplanting.

It is not possible to ignore the global impact of these local actions. Too many people are trying to divide limited resources. "We are also in a situation where farmers are pushing against the limits of the fertilizer existing crops can use," Brown said. Food shortages and unemployment will only worsen if one part of the equation is not changed. Either we reduce population growth or fool ourselves into thinking that the Earth will be able to sustain our agricultural and industrial base.

A Growing Problem

In only 11 years, from 1987 until 19988, world population will grow from five billion to six billion. By contrast, it took 123 years for the population to grow from one billion to two billion, and at higher fertility rates. Though the total fertility rate has dropped to 3.4 children per woman, the number of new borns added each year has doubled because the base has expanded significantly and infant mortality has declined. In Egypt itself, the population growth rate decreased from 3 percent in 1985 to 2.1 percent in 1994 as a result of investments in health and housing, family planning, employment, and education, especially of women. If the Egyptian government continues these initiatives, Egypt may be able to reduce its annual population growth rate to 1.6 percent. The larger global population base, however, means that although birth rates decline, the population will continue to grow exponentially. They key to political stability, economic health, and environmental preservation is the resolution of the overpopulation problem in Egypt and around the world. If Egypt were able to feed itself it would not have to squander a third of its import budget on meeting its food needs. Fewer people mean less competition for scarce resources like land, food, water, and jobs. This is not complicated economic theory but common sense. Government measures to aid agriculture through technical support and credit to poor farmers, initiate family planning and educational measures, and restrict harmful industrial or agricultural practices all create a better living standard.

Economic and political reform without the reduction of population growth rates are doomed to failure. A conservative UN projection places the population at 8.3 billion by 2025. Developing countries have the right to assert their independence from the overbearing, paternalistic measures of developed countries like the US. and determine their own national policies on birth control, agricultural practices, and economic issues. The Western countries are examples of what over-zealous industrialism and lack of regulation yields: polluted rivers and eroded, exhausted soil. Egypt has already demonstrated that it can reduce population growth rates.

This is the first step on the long road toward cleaning up the environment through agricultural and industrial legislation. Nations should monitor their rates of population growth, especially developing nations like Egypt, where the potential for environmental abuse is great. Ideally, politicians , farmers, and citizens in every country will realize that in terms of the environment, there is no such thing as a "national" problem. All human actions on the environment have global impacts. Population growth is an international problem in need of international consensus. Through education and sensible agricultural and industrial expansion, population growth can be stabilized and the environment preserved, enabling future generations to enjoy the timeless vista of the pyramids and the cloudless blue skies over the silhouette of Cairo