Kharga: sustainability for the oases of the Western Desert?
p. 90-91
Texte intégral
| 90,000 | 443 | 1959-1967 | 1997 | 1999-2015 |
| Population of Kharga in 2017 | Private wells in Kharga | New Valley Project | Toshka Project | Restoration of the temple of Hibis |
| Source: CAPMAS, 2017; Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation/Sagaci Research | ||||
1Egypt has six large inhabited oases west of the Nile: Siwa, Fayoum, Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga. Their appearance is a result of climatic changes some 5,000 years ago. At that time the Sahara experienced the beginning of a marked process of aridification and the territory of Egypt took on its current physical landscape – desert split by a fertile valley and dotted with water points, the oases. Aridification had a decisive impact on the emergence of Ancient Egyptian civilisation: by gathering populations around permanent water sources (the valley, the oases), the climate concentrated the inhabitants, creating a precondition for the birth of a complex, hierarchical and centralised society.
2Water supplies in the Western Desert are underground: the contribution of meteoric water is negligible. Permanent human presence depends on the exploitation of fossil water extracted from the giant Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (2 million km2) using technological solutions that have evolved over time: artesian wells, qanats*, pumps etc.
The Kharga Depression: on the margins
3Kharga is an archipelago of irrigated spots within a vast depression some 200 km long and has always been considered peripheral in relation to the political and economic centres of the Nile Valley. It was long used as a place of exile for the banished, such as Patriarch Nestorius in the 5th century. Geo-archaeological research on the site of El-Deir to the north of the depression has revealed phases of expansion (Ptolemaic and beginning of the Roman Period) and contraction (end of the Roman Period) of agricultural activity within an environment of fluctuating climate. The greatest expansion of agricultural land corresponds to the Roman Climatic Optimum and the site was cultivated until the 1960s. The historic variations in the cultivated surface area are a reminder that the oasis is a precarious balance of water, soil and human labour. Caught between forces of development – the passage of trade routes, the creation of boreholes – and forces of destruction – rapid soil erosion by wind bearing sand, flash floods after downpours, soil salinisation through bad drainage, political changes – the oases have experienced in-built instability.
Conquering the desert with water
4This instability has never been taken into account in the development projects implemented in the Kharga depression, all of which have adopted a modernist and technical view of tackling the frontier. The first was launched in 1959 by the General Desert Development Organisation: the New Valley Project aimed to increase water supply in order to expand the agricultural area and encourage the settlement of families from the Nile Valley. Several dozen deep wells were dug in the depression, resulting in almost a doubling of water extraction between 1960 and 1980 (from 42 to 78 million m3 per annum). The population grew quickly. Beginning in 1973 the priority shifted to the urban development of the oasis and the transformation of Kharga City into an agro-town with both commercial and administrative roles. In 1997, the New Valley Project was relaunched by Mubarak but on a different premise: the task was now to divert water from Lake Nasser to irrigate more than 200,000 hectares of agricultural land south of the Kharga Depression. Dubbed the Toshka Project, the initiative was costly and ran into technical and organisational difficulties: in 2017 roughly 12,000 hectares of new agricultural land were in the process of being reclaimed.
5The working of deep wells has led to the drying of surface wells and a rapid fall in piezometric levels recorded after 1975. Around Kharga City the deep water table is falling 1 to 2 metres per year, provoking competition between boreholes, and throwing doubt upon the sustainability of water extraction. Furthermore, the water extracted from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer is acidic, rich in iron and other minerals, which has an impact on the quality of the soil and the health of the inhabitants.
5.3 The main oases of Egypt

5.4 Kharga Oasis and the temple of Hibis

© AFP
Auteur
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Romain J. Garcier
Romain J. Garcier, lecturer in geography, ENS-LSH, UMR 5600 Environment, Town, Society (EVS)
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