Egypt

DOMINATING NORTHEAST AFRICA, the Republic of Egypt has a land area of 386,660 sq. mi. (1,001,449 sq. km.), with a population of 80,335,036 (2007 est.), and a population density of 192 people per sq. mi. (74 people per sq. km.). Some 7,933,000 people live in Cairo, the capital, the 14th largest city in the world population, with a population density of 91,900 per sq. mi. (35,420 per sq. km.). Alexandria, the second largest city, has a population of 3,917,000 and a population density of 3,575 per sq. mi. (1,378 per sq. km.). Egypt is heavily reliant on the Nile River, and droughts over many centuries have caused severe food shortages in the country. However, there have not been enduring shortages, and the population of has Egypt grown steadily. Temperatures in recent years have been high, however, reaching 105.8 degrees F (41 degrees C) on August 6, 1998, the warmest August day on record.

With many areas of Egypt undeveloped, the rate of per capita carbon dioxide emissions has been low, at 1.4 metric tons per person in 1990, rising to 2.0 metric tons by 2003. The country's electricity production is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, which account for 77 percent of total production, the remaining 23 percent comes from hydropower, much of it from the hydroelectricity plant at Aswan. The development of this hydroelectric plant also led to the creation of Lake Nasser, which allows some 400,000 hectares of cropland to be cultivated throughout the year.

Electricity generation and heat production account for 31 percent of the country's carbon dioxide emissions; 5 percent come from other energy industries, and 28 percent from manufacturing and construction. In Cairo and many other urban areas, considerable traffic congestion has resulted in transportation contributing to 17 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions; liquid fuels contribute to 67 percent of the emissions, 2 percent come from solid fuels, 22 percent from gaseous fuels, and 9 percent from cement manufacturing. Pollution in much of urban Egypt has been bad for many years. There are more than a million automobiles in Cairo, many poorly maintained, which contribute to the world's highest level of lead and suspended solid particles in the world. This accounts for an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 premature deaths per year, and has contributed con-siderably to the environmental pollution, and to the regions greenhouse gas emissions.

The Mubarak government of Egypt ratified the Vienna Convention in 1988, and took part in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change signed in Rio de Janeiro in May 1992, which was ratified in 1994. In October 1997, M. El-Ashry from the World Bank addressed the Fifth World Bank Conference on Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development at Washington, D.C. The Egyptian government signed the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on March 15, 1999, which was ratified on January 12, 2005, and took effect on April 12, 2005.