Mighty Nile River threatened by waste, warming and a giant Ethiopian dam – The Japan Times

Mighty Nile River threatened by waste, warming and a giant Ethiopian dam – The Japan Times

"People have to understand that the Nile is as important - if not more - than the pyramids," said Mostafa Habib, 29, co-founder of the environmental group Very Nile.. No country is more reliant on the Nile than Egypt, whose teeming population has just passed 100 million people, over 90 percent of whom live along the river's banks.. "All of us Egyptians benefit from the Nile, so cleaning it up is a way of giving back to my country," said one of the volunteers, Walied Mohamed, a 21-year-old university student.. "The Nile is the main source of drinking water for Egypt.. Hydrologists say people face water scarcity when their supply drops below 1,000 cubic meters (35,300 cubic feet) per person annually.. Egyptian officials say the individual share was 570 cubic meters in 2018, and this is expected to further drop to 500 cubic meters by 2025.. "Egypt needs to invest in non-Nile sources of water," said Jeannie Sowers, a political science professor at University of New Hampshire who authored a book on Egypt's environmental policies. ".