Cargando…
Past and future trends of Egypt’s water consumption and its sources
For millennia the Nile supplied Egypt with more water than needed. As the population grew and the economy expanded, demand on water increased accordingly. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis to reconstruct how total demand on water outstripped supply of the Nile water in the late 1970s, starti...
Autores principales: | , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8302683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34301947 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24747-9 |
_version_ | 1783726925717438464 |
---|---|
author | Nikiel, Catherine A. Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. |
author_facet | Nikiel, Catherine A. Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. |
author_sort | Nikiel, Catherine A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | For millennia the Nile supplied Egypt with more water than needed. As the population grew and the economy expanded, demand on water increased accordingly. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis to reconstruct how total demand on water outstripped supply of the Nile water in the late 1970s, starting from a surplus of about 20 km(3) per year in the 1960s leading to a deficit of about 40 km(3) per year by the late 2010s. The gap is satisfied by import of virtual water. The role of economic growth in driving per capita demand on water is quantified based on detailed analysis of water use by agriculture and other sectors. We develop and test an empirical model of water demand in Egypt that relates demand on water to growth rates in the economy and population. Looking forward, we project that within this decade of the 2020 s, under nominal scenarios of population and economic growth, Egypt is likely to import more virtual water than the water supplied by the Nile, bringing into question the historical characterization of Egypt as “the gift of the Nile”. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8302683 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83026832021-08-12 Past and future trends of Egypt’s water consumption and its sources Nikiel, Catherine A. Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. Nat Commun Article For millennia the Nile supplied Egypt with more water than needed. As the population grew and the economy expanded, demand on water increased accordingly. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis to reconstruct how total demand on water outstripped supply of the Nile water in the late 1970s, starting from a surplus of about 20 km(3) per year in the 1960s leading to a deficit of about 40 km(3) per year by the late 2010s. The gap is satisfied by import of virtual water. The role of economic growth in driving per capita demand on water is quantified based on detailed analysis of water use by agriculture and other sectors. We develop and test an empirical model of water demand in Egypt that relates demand on water to growth rates in the economy and population. Looking forward, we project that within this decade of the 2020 s, under nominal scenarios of population and economic growth, Egypt is likely to import more virtual water than the water supplied by the Nile, bringing into question the historical characterization of Egypt as “the gift of the Nile”. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-07-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8302683/ /pubmed/34301947 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24747-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Nikiel, Catherine A. Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. Past and future trends of Egypt’s water consumption and its sources |
title | Past and future trends of Egypt’s water consumption and its sources |
title_full | Past and future trends of Egypt’s water consumption and its sources |
title_fullStr | Past and future trends of Egypt’s water consumption and its sources |
title_full_unstemmed | Past and future trends of Egypt’s water consumption and its sources |
title_short | Past and future trends of Egypt’s water consumption and its sources |
title_sort | past and future trends of egypt’s water consumption and its sources |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8302683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34301947 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24747-9 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT nikielcatherinea pastandfuturetrendsofegyptswaterconsumptionanditssources AT eltahirelfatihab pastandfuturetrendsofegyptswaterconsumptionanditssources |