Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Living under the cloud

By Sherine Nasr

If you are living in Cairo, you will not need to be told how the black smog that silently but relentlessly tortured the capital's residents this time last year returned last week with a vengeance. It was so prevalent last Friday in particular that it caused a number of road accidents that claimed at least two lives. More generally, Cairenes -- particularly those who commute on a daily basis -- are starting to suffer the tell-tale signs of irritable throats and sore or watery eyes. Those who lived through the hellish weeks of last year's smog are hoping that, unlike then, this year it will only be around for a few days. Unfortunately, all the evidence suggests the opposite.

The "black cloud," as it is dubbed, has been studied by local environmentalists and meteorologists over the past year.

"This time we managed to forecast its arrival 72 hours in advance, thanks to the early warning system that was installed last month," said Nadia Makram Ebeid, state minister for environmental affairs.

In addition to 36 stations monitoring air pollutants in Greater Cairo on a daily basis, the ministry, together with the Egyptian Meteorological Authority (EMA), are investigating the weather factors that may be contributing to the polluting phenomenon.

However, almost everybody agrees that it is the burning of agricultural rice and cotton waste that is at the root of the problem. According to Mohamed Naguib Abu Se'da, adviser to the State Ministry for Environmental Affairs, cotton and rice are cultivated in large areas in governorates adjacent to Cairo. Daqahliya has 430,000 feddans of rice, which produce some 860,000 tons of straw. In Sharqiya there are 180,000 feddans of rice.

Last year, when the smog occurred for the first time, a ministerial committee representing numerous authorities was established to study ways of preventing it from happening again. Its findings prioritised the need to put an end to the burning of solid and agricultural waste in all governorates.

You may, therefore, be surprised to learn that farmers are ordered by their municipalities to burn agricultural waste every year under threat of being denied their quotas of government-subsidised pesticide.

"Burning is the traditional way of getting rid of waste," concedes Mohamed Abdel-Aziz of the agricultural department in Sharqiya. It has, he believes, many positive effects, especially in the sense that it makes the land more fertile, increases its productivity and is a sure way of getting rid of pests.

If this is true, the question then becomes why, if this has been the traditional way of doing things, Cairo was first troubled by the smog last November?

"There are meteorological factors that, when combined with environmental pollution, create what we call the black cloud," the EMA's Ashraf Hammad explained. The polluting impact of burning, he continued, only happens if the air is unusually stable. "This helps concentrate pollutants in the lower part of the air and the high pressure traps them in the lowest air layers. That's why we have this awful sense of suffocation," he claimed.

Although burning waste has been criminalised, the practice is sure to continue, at least for the foreseeable future. There are insufficient straw presses to deal with the waste in an environmentally friendly way. So farmers have no choice but to burn their agricultural wastes: if it accumulates, it will not only become fertile ground for rats and snakes but will also occupy the precious space on which farmers hope to grow their next crop.

Many farmers, nevertheless, recognise the need for alternatives to be made available. One suggestion is to provide more presses to grind straw which can then be used as fertiliser. In Sharqiya, governor Emadeddin Abul-Ela has announced that just such a long-term solution has been adopted, converting straw into fertiliser at a capacity of 500 tons a day. There are similar plans for Damietta and Daqahliya.

"The ministry of agriculture is now sponsoring a national campaign to recycle agricultural waste in this way," says Ebeid. "This will have a very positive impact in solving the 'black cloud' problem. Meanwhile, our main goal now is to stop open-air burning immediately."

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Related stories:
What goes round comes round 2 - 8 December 1999
Pollution on trial 18 - 24 November 1999
The plot thickens 4 - 10 November 1999
Lifting the veil of smog 4 - 10 November 1999
Cloudy horizons 4 - 10 November 1999
Without silver linings 28 Oct. - 3 Nov. 1999

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