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Nile water for Sinai: Framework for analysis
Author(s) -
Guariso Giorgio,
Whittington Dale,
Zikri Baligh Shindi,
Mancy Khalil Hosny
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/wr017i006p01585
Subject(s) - irrigation , land reclamation , water resource management , agriculture , agricultural economics , water conservation , human settlement , geography , environmental planning , business , natural resource economics , environmental science , economics , ecology , archaeology , biology
The current plans of the Egyptian government call for a massive expansion of irrigated land, approximately 1.8 million additional hectares by the year 2000. The Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation presently intends to construct the Salaam, or Peace, Canal for the delivery of Nile water to the new reclamation areas in the Eastern Delta and Sinai. There are two primary objectives in transporting water to Sinai: (1) economic: to reclaim land to increase agricultural production and (2) political: to settle Sinai and establish a larger, permanent Egyptian presence. In this paper a multiobjective programing model is formulated and solved in order to examine the trade‐offs between the economic and political objectives and to study their interrelationships with such variables as water quantity, water quality, water transport costs, crop rotations, and irrigation technology. The results illustrate that the high costs of water transport to Sinai will require the use of modern, water‐efficient irrigation technologies, as well as entail substantial economic sacrifices if the political objectives associated with agricultural settlements in Sinai are to be achieved through the use of intensive, year‐round cultivation such as that practiced in the Nile Valley. The analysis also shows that the entire array of decisions to be made regarding the reclamation efforts (e.g., routes for the canals, site selection, irrigation technology) may be sensitive to the value of water in the rest of the country, a point largely ignored in the official plans.