Egypt Erects Sand Barriers as Rising Sea Swallows the Nile Delta

Egypt Erects Sand Barriers as Rising Sea Swallows the Nile Delta

The flooding had become inevitable. Every winter, amid heavy rains and storms, the Mediterranean Sea would rise and spill over into fisherman Aziz Lasheen's low-lying village in Egypt's northern governorate of Kafr El-Sheikh.

As water poured into the village of Mastroua it would destroy homes, saturate farmland with saltwater and cover the road Lasheen and others walked to reach their fishing boats.

"As fishermen and farmers, we were scared to go to work as the rising water covered up the shore. The tide was so high," the 33-year-old said.

That meant his income dropped by 70% every winter. "During that time of the year, I used to use my savings to afford my family's needs," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But this past winter, Lasheen had no need to break into his savings, after the construction of a series of low-cost natural dikes to keep the surging waters away from his village during more and more violent storms along the Mediterranean coast.

Egypt, the host of November's COP27 UN climate conference, is scaling up efforts to cushion the densely populated Nile Delta against the increasingly intense flooding that plagues low-lying areas around the world.

As part of a broader $105-million coastal management project led by