• Loss and Damage Research Observatory
  • Loss and Damage Research Observatory

A lake to remember: human-made loss disrupting lives in Al Shakhlouba Village, Egypt

Home > Publication Details > A lake to remember: human-made loss disrupting lives in Al Shakhlouba Village, Egypt
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Al Shakhlouba is a relatively small community (by Egyptian standards), with 20,000 inhabitants. Its context may not be unique in how it is affected by climate change, or in how its population struggle is now a daily endeavour and not an isolated seasonal occurrence. Yet it is a good example to showcase how communities in symbiotic existence with nature can fare if such a relationship has been broken by one party: humans in this case. Nature – personified in the bounty provided by the ecosystem – becomes less able to give the same expected yield, as people ignore the signs of a downward spiral. The Al Shakhlouba community have been flagging this ecological degradation (amplified by climate change) for a long time, but have no self- governance or adequate political representation to manifest the change they need. This is due, not to a lack of awareness, but economic and political disenfranchisement.
Hence, it is crucial to look at the subject of climate loss and damages beyond the sovereign negotiations at COP conferences and to demand that the communities themselves are adequately seated at the table, as they are the ones facing the burning of their rainforests in the Amazon and they are the ones facing the collapse of the fish in their lake of El Burrullus; same struggle, but different geographies.

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