Friday March 29th, 2024
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Here is Egypt's Plan to Halve its Air Pollution Rate by 2023

Electric cars, buses, and new laws coming your way!

Staff Writer

A strategy has been put in place by the Ministry of Environment to reduce Egypt’s air pollution rate by 50% by the year 2023, according to Egypt Independent.

The plan aims to reduce pollution by setting strict rules to factories that increase air pollution every day, such as cement and fertilising factories.

Minister of Environment Khaled Fahmy insists that the government is working on reducing vehicle exhausts by replacing old cars with electric ones, and that new buses will be released with modifications to control air pollution. 15 electric buses will be functional in Alexandria by the month of June as part of the initiative. These buses cause no pollution, and do not have gas emissions. Replacing old cars with electric ones would require charging stations, parking lots, and energy sources to supply the cars, but would not cost a huge amount of money, according to Director General of Brilliance-Bavarian auto group.  

Dust is considered the main problem in Egypt’s air, as desert covers most of the country. Unfortunately, this is not something that we can really control. But the other half of the problem comes as a result of unclean streets, and cars’ and power plants' exhausts, which is something we can control and should do better as a society to reduce. Let's stop littering. That could be the first step.

It seems like we are headed on the right track, though. In 2017, air pollution rate decreased by 19% compared to the rate in 2015, according to Fahmy.

Egypt currently ranks 66th in the Environmental Performance Index, which ranks countries on how close they are to established environment policy goals; that's basically how well governments are controlling or dealing with pollution.

In terms of most polluted countries in the world, Egypt ranks 6th, and is more polluted than Nigeria, according to Numbeo. Cairo, on the other hand, ranks 2nd in most polluted cities, only less polluted than Delhi. This shows that although we are on the right track to reducing pollution, it is still a major problem, and we hope that this new plan will help the country drop in these ranks.

Main image from Air Pollution in Egypt Blogspot