Egypt as a developing country faces the most serious challenge, which is how to make balance between population growth and water resources. The examination of current trends of population growth shows an annual increase of 2%. It means that Egypt has to feed an additional number of more than 1.4 million people every year so the expansion in cultivated land faces strict limits because it mostly depends on one source of water (NILERIVER). Annual water budget from NileRiver is 55.5 billion m3/ year.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Earth, with its diverse and abundant life forms, including over six billion humans, is facing a serious water crisis. All the signs suggest that it is getting worse and will continue to do so, unless corrective action is taken. This crisis is one of water governance, essentially caused by the ways in which we mismanage water. The water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of our planet Earth.
But the real tragedy is the effect it has on the everyday lives of poor people, who are blighted by the burden of water-related disease, living in degraded and often dangerous environments, struggling to get an education for their children and to earn a living, and to get enough to eat.
The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan identified WEHAB (Water and sanitation, Energy, Health, Agriculture, and Biodiversity) as integral to a coherent international approach to sustainable development. Water is essential to success in each of these focus areas. The WSSD also added the 2015 target of reducing by half the proportion of people without sanitation.