Egypt

Its renewable internal freshwater is just 8.9 cubic metres per person (World Bank, 2022), so nearly all supply arrives from upstream and per-person renewable water sits well below the 1,000 cubic metre scarcity line. Only about 78% of Egyptians use safely managed drinking water (World Bank/JMP, 2023), and the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam upstream adds long-term supply risk.

mports around 29 million tonnes (FAO GIEWS), and the World Food Programme notes it relies on global markets for more than half of its staples. At the same time the Nile Delta and Valley are intensively farmed, making Egypt a major exporter of citrus, onions, potatoes and other fruit and vegetables. It is therefore largely self-sufficient in fresh produce but heavily import-dependent for grains, oils and sugar.

The national staples are ful medames (stewed fava beans), koshari (rice, macaroni, lentils and chickpeas in tomato sauce) and ta'meya (fava-bean falafel), all cheap, vegan by default and sold everywhere, alongside molokhia, lentils and flatbread. A visitor can eat well on plants without any effort.

The domestic organic market is small. This sits right at the low edge of a meaningful organic sector.

Wadi El Rayan. Coverage is reasonable but enforcement and funding are uneven and some reserves function largely on paper. Marine protection of the Red Sea reefs remains limited relative to the pressure from tourism.

used by millions of migrating raptors and storks. Endemism is low, with a short list that includes the Egyptian weasel and the tiny Sinai baton blue butterfly, and many large desert mammals such as gazelles and the cheetah are now rare or gone. The picture is modest overall, strong at sea and depleted on land.

It gives its name to extra-long-staple Egyptian cotton (Gossypium barbadense), and has made linen from flax since pharaonic times, paper from the Nile papyrus reed, palm-leaf baskets and Bedouin wool weaving. These crafts are still produced and traded today.

acceptable world standards. There is no comprehensive national single-use plastic ban, litter and plastic in the Nile and on the coasts are common, and open burning of waste adds to urban smog.

The gap is filled by Cairo's Zabaleen, informal recyclers who collect roughly 9,000 of the city's 15,000 tonnes of daily household waste and recover up to about 85% of what they gather, one of the most efficient informal recycling systems anywhere. Coverage outside this network is patchy and much waste is dumped or burned.

ut 5 per cent wind and solar. Fossil CO2 emissions are low at about 2.55 tonnes per person in 2023, reflecting modest per-person consumption. Egypt hosted the COP27 climate summit in 2022 and targets 42 per cent renewable electricity by 2030 through projects such as the Benban solar park, yet it is at the same time expanding gas production and liquefied natural gas exports. Delivery on decarbonisation has so far been weak.

nd community and homestay tourism exists in these places. However the dominant tourism economy is extractive, built on large Red Sea resorts, Nile cruises and heavily commercialised heritage sites. The living and the extractive sit side by side.

Tahtib, the Saidi stick dance, is inscribed by UNESCO, while raqs sharqi and the Sufi Tanoura spinning dance remain widely performed. Folk music on the mizmar and tabla, the popular sha'abi style, and distinctive Nubian music and traditions stay very much alive. Sufi orders and their moulid gatherings continue as living ancestral and spiritual practice.