Interior of artificial mountain.

Cambell: Since the time of the pharaoh's, Egyptians have done things on a grand scale.

00.00.00.00

This is the inside of an artificial mountain.

Walking through the mountain

In the 1960s, a huge dam was built on the River Nile and as the waters rose, they threatened to consume the temple of the most revered Egyptian pharaoh.

It was cut into pieces, moved stone-by-stone and rebuilt against the new mountainside.

Today Ramses the second can sit and ponder anew the lessons of three thousand years... lessons that still haven't been learned: tamper with the Nile and you meddle with the lifeblood of a nation.

Bulldozers/dust etc.

Battered by blinding dust storms and burnt by a relentless sun, the    desert of Toshki has to be one of the world's least attractive places.

01.44

But it's here - where temperature soar to the mid-60s- the Government plans to build a verdant paradise - complete with hi-tech agriculture and high-rise cities teeming with people.  And all sustained by this canal piercing deep into the desert and flowing with the waters of the Nile.

Worker talking

"This is Egypt's future - the whole world will see the result."

Cambell:  The Government acclaims the Toshki as part of a tradition of grand projects on the Nile that stretches back to the pyramids - and for the workers, the only argument is who's trying hardest.

Group of workers arguing

Without us people from El Arich tyis project wouldn't even begin.      

02.42

No, this is an Egyptian project - no matter where you're from!        

Yeah but Arich people are tougher, we have better constitution.

Map of development

Cambell:  In a desert-bound convention hall, the resident engineer, Amir,   shows off the dream for Toshki in plaster of Paris and cardboard - and revels in the idea of going down in the history books alongside the pharaohs.

02.58

Cambell:  Today it is just desert Yeah?

Amir

Amir: At the moment it is all desert. Once the water enters it will be cultured and green like a ****

Cambell:  It's a grand dream... first farmlands - then -industry - then millions of people resettled from the over-populated Nile Valley... a simple answer to Egypt's multitude of problems...

Amir:  The tourists will spread here then there will be more investors more hotels and more tourists.

CambellFor you it's a big dream - one day it will come true.  In Shallah -  (laugh)

03.51

Mirage

Cambell:  But - as it's critics claim - it may all turn out to be nothing more than a billion - dollar mirage.

Green Party Professor

Prof:  It is something false because anyone of these people if they have enough information to see what is the end of his work and what it will lead to, he will be disastrously upset.

Leader of green party showing the map

Cambell:  For the leader of Egypt's fledging Green party, Toshki is little more than a sleight of hand by the Prime Minster.

Prof:  This national project gives his government a hope and it could give people and the people not knowing much about economics or agriculture and all these things, he wants to create hope

Cambell:  and he won't be proved right or wrong until he's dead of course.

Prof:  "That's right"

Cambell:  So do you see this a modern day pharonic gesture in the sense of  building a pyramid, or whatever?

Prof:  Yes.... that's right.

Mountains, desert,boat sails and men on camels

Cambell:  For thousands of years the river Nile has not only nourished civilisations but provided political power to their rulers.

05.11

Cambell:  Power over the Nile has meant power over the people.

River bank of Nile with cattle and buffalo in water

Cambell:  But the Nile today is a sick river - dammed, diverted, squandered and polluted - until it can hardly sustain Egypt's 62 million people - let alone another 30 million in the next two decades.

It' only an environmental tragedy in the making - it a recipe for social and political disaster.

Canadian woman

Canadian woman:  I think and this is a view shared by many in the donor community   that the country will go through a crisis period.  It's inevitable.  And it's not the big projects like Toshki and Al Salam that's going to relieve all of the stresses.  Unless the country comes to grips with the population/demographic issues they will face some major crises. Peace issues.  They will face civil strife in the country.

05.58

Cambell:  Traveling north from Toshki towards Aswan, you begin to realise why water's the crucial issue ....

Egypt is 95 percent desert - it's 62 million people are crammed into the Nile valley and its delta.

It was no coincidence that the Toshki project was commenced this year on the anniversary of Egypt's last great Nile project - the Aswan High Dam.

Map of the High Dam

A quarter of a century ago, it was the High Dam that was touted as the cure-all for Egypt ..... a proud boast that man had at last triumphed over nature.

07.01

But while the High Dam has saved Egypt from both drought and flood, ..... it's also trapped vital silt that once fertilised farms downstream and the reduced flow has meant that the once mighty Nile is stagnating.

Canadian woman

Canadian woman:  Farmers are now experiencing limits to access to water or even water shortages - seasonal shortages or even continual shortages because there just isn't the flow for use of water at the household level, use of water for farming purposes.

Kids with cows,Water wheel Kid drinking from water

Cambell:  At least one third of the Nile's waters are simply wasted ... a result of ancient or out - moded farming methods based on the principle of limitless water supplies.

07.56

Cambell:  But successive Governments - the critics charge - have always preferred ostentatious remedy to the nitty-gritty of mundane reform.

Canadian woman

Canadian woman:  The government has to be seen to be doing something and Al Salam and Toshki are two very major undertakings that the government can say we've diverted water, we've expanded agricultural areas, we're willing to resettle people we're willing to take some stress away from the current stresses we see right now on the Nile.

People in boats on the Nile

Cambell:  The stresses on the Nile are felt most seriously at the end of the  country - where the river meets the Mediterranean.

08.40

Cambell:  This is the Delta region - once the breadbasket of Egypt and the envy of the Middle East.

08.48

Peter and Haj in orchard

Cambell:  Haj has spent his 72 years on this land, his family for so many generations before him, he can't even guess at how long.

Like most peasants, the land is his life, his pride ... and the only gift he has to leave to his sons and to their  sons....

Kids carrying kindling

Cambell:  Haj says that since the High Dam was built, he has watched his land become impoverished .....

Now he suspects that what he has to leave behind will be worthless.

Haj sitting talking and smoking hooker

Haj:  The wealth used to beyond description.  Once we had rice, maize and fruit - now it's all lost.  The good days are over and they will never come back again.

           09.51

Cambell:  Amongst the people of the Delta, liver and kidney diseases are rife and amonghst children, an extraordinary rate of mental retardation is blamed on the waters of their Nile.

In the ancient town of Rosetta - a fishing village since the pharaohs - Abu Shahir approaches me to explain what's happened to the river he's fished for 50 years.

           10.27

Fisherman anchor thrown in

Abu:  This anchor used to be thrown in pure fine sand and has come back as clean when it was thrown in today the anchor comes out dirty and eaten by the bottom of the sea and this is all caused by the water of the Nile.

Cambell:  Abu Shahir and his friends say their catch is poisoned .... breeding grounds disappearing.

11.00

Abu Shahir

Abu:  When the fish were thriving on the Nile we were thriving on fish.  It was a pleasure to drink the water with no worries in the world people used to grow strong and healthy on the waters of the Nile now they just waste away.

Fishing boats

Cambell:  It's already dawned on most people that something's critically wrong with their river .... but since the Government rarely shares its anxieties with the population or gives it much information at all, few understand what's gone wrong, nor why - nor what the solution may be ......

11.33

Buses on the road

But as you enter Cairo, the crisis is self-evident ..... the choking air a refection of the hidden, filthy stew of chemical waste that pours into the Nile ......

11.57

Canadian woman

Canadian woman:  As you realise many of your industries are still owned by government, so on the one hand government is enhancing a law to address those serious problems of industrial waste and pollution and on the other hand, many of those industries that polluting the Nile, that are guilty and would be normally penalised under law four are currently owned by the government.  So it will be a very, very difficult and complex and delicate issue to deal with.

Cambell:  Belatedly, a new environmental affairs agency has been set up with new powers to punish polluters.

Dr Mohammed El-Zarka          

Egyptian Environmental Agency          

Cambell:  But the problem is not enough people being punished, not enough people taking note of the law? 

Zarka:  Yes ... not enough people yet.  You are right. (Laughs) so why is it that industrialists are not cracked down on?  Here appears the other side of the issue that I mentioned before is social, political and something like this, that is why not so many people have been punished yet.

12.58

Car spraying insecticide polluted street

Cambell:  Even if there is a new political will the problems are nothing short of awesome.

In Cairo, the air's hardly fit to breathe ..... the Nile no longer fit to drink.

But these are issues which the Government is positively embarrassed to address......

Dr El Zarka

Cambell: Is there perhaps no great sense of urgency because the people who suffer most from pollution of the Nile are the peasants who have no political power,  the industrialists are not the people that suffer when it comes to filth in the Nile.....

13.54

Zarka:  " You know all Egyptians suffer together"

Cambell:  Peasants suffer more than the industrialists in this country that's true...

Zarka:  All are subjected to drink water from the Nile, and to breathe air from the atmosphere.

Cambell:  But people like yourself can drink mineral water bottles, most peasants can't afford that.

14.27

Zarka:  I myself don't drink mineral water, I drink direct water from the tap.

Cambell: You drink water from the Nile?

Zarka:  From the tap not from the Nile directly

Cambell: Plenty of people have got no tap water to drink from they drink directly from the Nile.

Zarka:  I think their health is better than mine.

Canadian woman

Canadian woman:  So it's not unusual for sewage to be dumped, garbage to be dumped, industrial waste to be dumped and every other pollutant.  So you can appreciate what it does to the health levels of those communities and that's a very high percentage of the population here  in Egypt - so it's a tragedy.

14.56

Cambell: So that's why we have such  high incidences of liver, kidney diseases.

Canadian woman:  Exactly

Cambell: Children suffering mental disabilities.

Canadian woman:  Exactly

Cambell: You wouldn't want any human to be in the Nile downstream of Cairo

Canadian woman:  "I wouldn't put my finger in the Nile"

Children singing in boat

Cambell:  Critics claim the government's crucial mistake is the same one all Arab regimes make.

15.34

It opts for flamboyant gestures like the Toshki Canal project, rather than own up to past errors and listen to those who suffer from them.... the people themselves.

Bhakri Green Professor

Prof:  Till now democracy in Egypt is in a very raw and very weak position.  So in Egypt you will find political decisions and no people decisions and this will create the biggest problems in Egypt because people have been converted to observers and not shareholders.

Canadian Woman

Canadian woman:  It would be not correct to say nothing's been done about the Nile.  There are many many attempts and many activities taking place, major projects taking place, to try to deal with the complex issues of managing the Nile.  The cumulative total probably has an effect, but is it the desired effect and is it going to deal with the massive problems this country faces in terms of dealing with it's environmental problems and water shortages?  I don't think so at this juncture.

Man walking through the Nile

Cambell:  At this juncture the myriad problems that beset the Nile have overwhelmed successive Egyptian Governments..... rendered them impotent by the sheer complexity and number of the crisis facing them.

16.55

Sun setting

Meanwhile upstream bulldozers bite into the Toshki desert trying to gouge out a new river paradise just like the Nile used to be.

ENDS

17.38