"Not only the prices are going up, the temperatures are too"
Like many cities on the other side of the Mediterranean in Europe, Cairo, a city with a population of more than 20 million, is currently experiencing an extreme heatwave. Forecasters are predicting temperatures of up to 42 degrees for the coming days. This is certainly not the first period of extreme heat to hit Egypt, a nation where people are generally accustomed to high temperatures in summer. The problem is that these high temperatures are constantly rising.
The public health alerts repeatedly broadcast on TV are now part and parcel of summer life. "Anyone with heart problems, children and the elderly should be careful, as should anyone doing physical work outside," is one alert that ran on the Egyptian TV station DMC during the last heatwave three weeks ago. It was followed by advice to either stay indoors or in the shade, in line with the old Egyptian adage: "Only Europeans and dogs lie in the sun".
The nation on the Nile is no stranger to the effects of climate change. "The summers in Egypt are getting hotter and the winters warmer," says former Egyptian Greenpeace staffer Ahmad Droubi. These days, Droubi works for the Climate Action Network organisation. The problem isn't that it's getting hotter throughout the summer season, he adds, but the increasing frequency of record-breaking heatwaves.
Worrying rise in temperatures
There's been a marked increase in temperatures over the years. "Average temperatures in Egypt have gone up by 1.25 degrees in the last three decades and by a little more than 0.5 degrees in the past ten years alone," explains Droubi. "The worrying aspect is the size of this temperature increase," he says, which is greater than the global average.
An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published early last year predicted that temperatures in the Mediterranean region – and above all in North Africa – would rise around 20 per cent faster than the global average.
It is Egypt's agricultural sector that is bearing the brunt of summer heatwaves and milder winters. More heat causes more evaporation – meaning farmers need to use more water.
"With the expected rise in temperatures over the next 15 years, the agricultural sector in Egypt is going to need an additional five to eight per cent more water to attain the same harvest yields as today," Ayman Awad told Qantara.de. He is responsible for conducting research into water issues in Egypt on behalf of the office of the delegation of the European Union in Cairo.
Egypt is already seen as a nation grappling with pro capita water scarcity. The impact on farming is already tangible, says Droubi. "In the last ten years, there have been six bad olive harvests. Two years ago, the mango harvest was miserable," he recalls. The plants need a certain period of cooler temperatures to form their seeds and often, this just doesn't happen, he says.
At a time when most imports from Ukraine have halted due to the war, the impact of the heat on the wheat-producing sector, which has been very badly hit, is even more dramatic: for Egypt's population of more than 100 million, wheat and bread are the elixir of life.
Productivity decreases in the heat
On a human level, the two-thirds of the population that the World Bank says either already lives below the poverty line or is in danger of slipping beneath it are, quite literally, feeling the heat the most. In Cairo, such people usually live in the poor neighbourhoods known as Ashway'at, which account for well over half of the urban area. "Most of the houses there don't have any insulation at all, no cooling systems and extremely bad ventilation," says Droubi.
Especially hard hit are people with no choice but to undertake heavy physical work out in the open, Droubi continues. For them, every heatwave is nothing short of torture. "We know the number of people killed by the heat is going up, but we don't have exact figures," he says. The heat puts a strain on the heart and circulation, leaving many people feeling tired and lethargic.
There are also no figures available on the impact of heatwaves on the nation's productivity and therefore the economy. In most cases, such figures aren't centrally recorded or even gathered in the first place, says Droubi.
Incidentally, in efforts to ascertain the effects of climate change, this is a problem affecting the entire African continent. "More than 90 per cent of all studies on climate change come from universities and institutions outside Africa," says Droubi.
For most people in Cairo, this all remains highly abstract, even though heatwaves are a recurrent issue. They are the latest addition to the list of all the things that make their lives difficult. This is reflected in a joke that recently did the rounds on social media: "We Egyptians love a rise: not only the prices are going up, the temperatures are too."
© Qantara.de 2023
Translated from the German by Nina Coon