Death of the Nile

This is very sad and sickening. I wonder where we are headed with this. I hope that these countries will somehow start treating this stream as scarce resource, but I believe western style environmentalism is quite a stretch. If the Nile collapses Europe will see refugees streams of unimaginable magnitude.

&gt; From the controversial construction of Africa’s largest dam in the rugged hinterland just shy of the Sudanese border, to Addis Ababa’s alleged displacement of tens of thousands of villagers in order to lease their prime Nile-side land to foreign agribusinesses, an uneasy pall hangs over the entire area.<p>Who are these &quot;foreign agribusinesses&quot;? Is it western corporations like &quot;gourmet coffee&quot; producers and such, or something more elementary &#x2F; basic like wheat, rice, grain producers?<p>And who is leading the prime Nile-side land to them? The government (which might be corrupt) or is it greedy individuals who are destroying their ecosystem at the cost of their fellow dwellers?<p>&gt; Just reporting there means navigating a complicated minefield of checkpoints, informants, and terrified interviewees.<p>Why?

Around a decade ago, chickens were infected (I don&#x27;t remember with what) and were making people sick in Cairo. So most people slaughtered them and threw them in the nile.<p>The nile is also the source of Bilharziasis. The nile is where a vast number of people throw their trash.

8 years ago on a felucca in the middle of the Nile in Luxor I saw a dead horse float by

<i>A lot of this appears to be due to climate change, and it is happening up and down the Nile valley.</i><p>Yes, and the ensuing political and social instability is driving mass migration; this is an accelerating process. What will happen when tens of millions of desperate Africans flee to Europe? The first, small, pulse of immigration is changing the political landscape of Europe!<p>I really don’t know the answers to these questions, but holy shit they worry me!

A side point but these BBC articles are essentially unreadable, with huge pictures, weird scrolling that only works with a mouse (no space-for-next-page) etc. No text-only link. Could they get a warning similar to the [video] title amendment?

&gt;&quot;We’ve always treated the river badly, we’ve always assumed it was big enough,” said Youssef Abugroun, an engineer and part-time fisherman, whose regular evening sessions now net him around 10% of his catch a decade ago. “But maybe we’re just too many for that now.”<p>And further down, mentions that the water is just &quot;too filthy&quot;. Sounds like a large part of this is due to people shitting into the river they drink from. Makes it hard to have much sympathy.