Save Alexandria

By Noura Abdo

Climate change for me is an everyday story, residing in my sub-conscious, a horrifying thought that threatens me and my beloved city, threatens the beach to which I owe the memories of my childhood and adulthood. All phases of my life are linked to this old city, Alexandria.

My story with climate change began in a science class in middle school. The teacher talked about global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer caused by the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I was fascinated when I started studying chemical engineering and learned more about the nature of ozone and the natural laws that control the proportions of the different gases in the atmosphere. In the summer, I would go with my family to our house by the beach and wonder what would happen to this place when the angry sea avenges our abuses of nature. I developed a sort of phobia about this; it lived in my sub-conscious and visited me in the form of dreams that predicted the inevitable drowning of Alexandria.

Those dreams haunted me: I saw myself standing firmly on a high rock and watching everything around me being flooded by water. It was terrifying and significant, even more terrifying was to find no one to believe these dreams. I call them dreams, and not nightmares, deliberately; I believe in all that I see in them.

Have you tried to reach deep within yourself and imagine the possibility of not seeing Alexandria again? Or of future generations not knowing it or enjoying its charms. Of Alexandria becoming overnight a mysterious sunken city, known only through history books?

I sometimes have a vision of the higher parts of Western Alexandria in 2030 as a mere island in the Mediterranean, proudly staying afloat in defiance of nature and history!

Against this background, I began to seriously consider studying the matter when I read about the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 2009 researching sources of alternative energy to replace fossil fuels, the number one reason for the increase in climate-change-inducing carbon dioxide. I tried to serve the cause by working in environmental organisations in Egypt, but when I couldn’t find a suitable place I decided to start with myself and study for a Masters degree.

My aim is to address the problem from an engineering and research-based perspective, so that I am able to do real work on the ground, contribute towards solutions to the crisis in Egypt through novel, structured, scientific ideas, and raise awareness of the situation through social and urban planning.