020318_Hurghada SECAP_FINAL

Direct
impact
• Temperature
• Heat waves
• Rain falls patterns
• Storms
• Floods
• Droughts
Indirect
impact
• Agricultural
• Food security
• Ecosystems
• Water
• Coastal zones
• Energy
• Forests
• Desert
• Tourism
• Health
• Fishery
Figure 14: 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 12 . Desertification means that sand encroachment to vegetation 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 13 . It occurs due to drought caused
by climatic variations, mainly high temperatures and irregular rainfall 14 . This is a typical climatic characteristic of the city
of Hurghada, Governorate of Red Sea, 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 15
On the national scale, Egypt is facing major challenges as a result of CC impacts among all sectors that reflect on the
built environment, which ranked as the most exposed and vulnerable sector, as a result of sea level rise (SLR) in the
coastal areas, whereas in non-coastal areas such as the city of Hurghada, 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% of the world’s GHG emissions, it is one of the developing countries vulnerable to the
negative impacts of climate change. The following pictures show climate change impacts in Egypt in the past years in
several cities such as: Alexandria, Aswan, Hurghada and the Red Sea area (Figure 15).
12
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.
13
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.
14
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).
15
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.
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