130218_Luxor-Egypt SECAP Final

2.2. Climate Change Impacts in Egypt
Many sectors will be influenced by CC risks: sea level rise, water scarcity, food insecurity, deteriorating human
health and ecosystems, disruption of the built environment in different scales ranging from building to cities,
losses for economic sectors across continents, especially in developing countries such as Egypt (Figure 16).
Direct
impact
Indirect
impact
• Temperature
• Heat waves
• Rain falls patterns
• Storms
• Floods
• Droughts
• Agricultural
• Food security
• Ecosystems
• Water
• Coastal zones
• Energy
• Forests
• Desert
• Tourism
• Health
• Fishery
Figure 16: Classification of climate change impacts on cities
One of the major impacts in Egypt is desertification, which is already threatening many continents, namely: Africa,
Asia and Latin America 14 . Desertification means that sand encroachment to vegetation and causes land loss, land
degradation and difficulty in vegetation growth, especially to farmland adjacent to desert. Desertification is
already affecting one quarter of the total land surface of the globe 15 . It occurs due to drought caused by climatic
variations, mainly high temperatures and irregular rainfall 16 . This is a typical climatic characteristic of the City of
Luxor, Governorate of Luxor, thus increased pest and disease due to high temperatures in winter will be a suitable
weather for mosquitoes to attack crops in spring that threat food security 17 .
On the national scale, Egypt is facing major challenges as a result of CC impact among all sectors that reflect on
the built environment, which ranked as the most exposed and vulnerable sectors that result of sea level rise (SLR)
in the coastal areas, whereas in non-coastal areas such as the city of Luxor, global warming would be a great
impact on the thermal comfort, air and water quality as well as pressure on the energy sector. Although Egypt
emits about 1 per cent of the world’s GHG emissions, it is one of the developing countries vulnerable to the
14
Alberto Marini, Mohamed Talbi, Desertification and Risk Analysis Using High and Medium Resolution Satellite Data: Training Workshop on
Mapping Desertification, Springer Science & Business Media, 2008, p. 274.
15
Olagunju, Temidayo Ebenezer.Ecology and Environmental Biology Unit, Department of Zoology University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria., "Drought,
desertification and the Nigerian environment," academic journals, Journal of Ecology and the Natural Environment., vol. 7, pp. 196-209, July, 2015.
16
UNESCO, "What is desertification? Objective: Introduce the phenomenon of desertification," Available at:
www.unesco.org/mab/doc/ekocd/chapter1.html - (Accessed on July 15, 2017).
17
E.C.OERKE, Institute for Plant Diseases, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitaet Bonn, Nussallee 9, D-53315 Bonn, Germany, "Crop losses to
pests" The Journal of Agricultural Science, vol. Volume 144, no. Issue 01, pp. pp 31-43, February 2006.
79