Campaign to stop development projects near Lake Qarun

Louise Sarant - 

Last December, the Tourism Development Authority (TDA) allocated large chunks of land located in the North of Lake Qarun Protected Area to the real estate developer Amer Group.

The North of Lake Qarun area has been a protected prea since the 1980s, and its boundaries have expanded gradually to include Gebel Qattrani, a desert filled with archaeological and geological treasures. The site has been proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A group of environmental activists recently launched a Facebook campaign to alert the community of Amer Group’s potentially devastating development plans. After building “Porto Marina” over the site of an ancient Greco-Roman Port on the North Coast in 2005, the group built its second monumental resort on the once pristine Red Sea coast, “Porto Sokhna.”

Environmentalists are worried the company may develop a similar resort on the lake’s shores, thus endangering the archaeological remains and violating laws that regulate protected areas. To have their voice heard, they launched a petition and created a Facebook group to stop any development project.

The Amer Group was granted 650 acres of land for a total of US$28,000 according to the American Chamber of Commerce. The group immediately announced its plan to dedicate 2.8 million square meters for the new development of “Porto Fayoum” in order to boost tourism and employment in the area.

No building of any sort has emerged yet out of the ground, but environmentalists are watching closely for any type of development. What worries environmental activists from Nature Conservation Egypt (NCE) and “Friends of Lake Qarun” is the ongoing road construction along the lake’s northern shore. “The road was already 40 km long last June,” exclaims Mindi Baha al-Din, an active member of NCE. “The road is a very serious threat to the area, she explains, because it is being constructed in a very careless manner and approaches the boundaries of the proposed World Heritage Site.”

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