The latest battleground is the Fayoum governorate, home to two natural protectorates since 1989. The environmental NGO Nature Conservation Egypt (NCE) and Fayoum-based NGO Friends of Lake Qarun are going after local real estate developer Amer Group over its 2.8-million-square meter Porto Fayoum project. With the North Coast’s Porto Marina and the Red Sea’s Porto Sokhna already under its belt, Amer Group has plans to develop a 10-kilometer stretch of coastal land with another 13 developers along the northern part of Lake Qarun — a project that will generate employment in an impoverished part of the country. 

 

The problem, environmentalists say, is that it endangers the Lake Qarun Protected Area and Gebel Qattrani, a desert filled with archaeological and geological remains that was proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. 

 

 

 

 

While the layman in Fayoum would probably welcome the idea of a project bringing in income and job opportunity to the quiet governorate, experts are far less eager.

 

Fayoum is Egypt’s oldest city and is located 130 kilometers southwest of Cairo. It is also home to the 1385-square-kilometer Lake Qarun. The North of  the Lake Qarun area has been a protected area since the 1980s, and its boundaries have expanded gradually to include Gebel Qattrani.

 

Still an unspoiled wilderness, the north shore of Lake Qarun is a haven for bird migration; it is classified under BirdLife as an Important Bird Area (IBA), or an area that holds priority in conservation. It also contains one of the world’s most complete fossil records, according to UNESCO, which includes one of the world’s best preserved fossilized whales and Neolithic sites that reveal the evolution of the use of the stone tool artifacts. 

 

Natural beauty aside, the Fayoum governorate is in dire economic need, according to its residents. The Amer Group project alone is expected to employ no less than 1,500 permanent employees, and thousands of day laborers during the construction phase.

 

Emmad Abou Sereei, the head waiter at the Helnan Hotel Fayoum, believes that a project like Amer’s will promote tourism and create jobs in Fayoum, something that is very much needed in this quiet governorate, especially after the revolution. 

The average resident would probably agree with this viewpoint. 

 

When I stopped at one of the local restaurants on the way to Gebel Qattrani, I was quickly surrounded by a large group of men who wanted to know more about the project; they had no idea about the projects being planned or who Amer Group was. Yet, they all shared the same belief: “We will be happy with the project. We really need work and we need tourists. The city lives on things like that.” 

But needless to say, environmentalists do not believe that large-scale resorts are the way to go. 

 

Sayyed Abdel Sattar, a contractor who uses natural materials to build housing in the village of Tunis and other areas around Egypt, believes that heritage is more important than income. 

 

“The area has archaeology finds older than 40 million years, no one will let them build anything there,” says Abdel Sattar. “They [archeologists] found things there they didn’t find anywhere else in the world and people are still discovering things under the ground. They still don’t know if they might find anything else.” 

 

Well-versed on the matter, Sattar thinks that “the activists and archeologists should say or do something. It would be a shame to build over historical archaeology. Yes, the people of Fayoum will welcome new job opportunities, but if they understood the circumstances they would not want the project to happen. Especially not when it’s at the cost of history and something that makes Egypt stand out.”   

 

 

 

 

Although environmentalists worry about Fayoum becoming industrialized or ruined by mega projects, officials from Amer Group say this is not going to happen. Mansour Amer, Chairman of Amer Group, says the Porto Fayoum project is out to help, not destroy the area. 

 

“Our role is development. We are concerned about developing our country, and Fayoum is one of the most beautiful areas in our country. It’s one of the places people really have to come and see,” says Amer, who stresses that he believes in Fayoum. He believes that Amer Group’s mission is to develop and discover the beauty of the country and to create jobs to support the economy. 

 

 

“This governorate is one of the poorest governorates in Egypt. Our information shows that over 60 percent of youth there are jobless and that 80 percent of the people employed work outside of Fayoum,” says Amer. “That’s why a decision was made by the previous government to work on turning this area into a touristic destination, outside the borders of the restricted area of course. It’s an area that has been approved by the government, so it’s an area ready for development.”

 

Amer says he’s happy to find people who are concerned with saving the environment, and that he encourages efforts to make sure that anyone who invests in the area abides by environmentally friendly standards. 

 

 

However, he believes that “if these people love their country or the people of this country, then they need to understand that we are creating jobs for the people of Fayoum, and that we need tourists to come and see this wonderful destination. How can people go to Fayoum if we don’t have proper accommodation for them to stay in to witness what a beautiful place it is?

 

 

“We care as much as they do about having an eco-friendly, green development that respects the environment. But at the same time we are creating jobs and bringing happiness to people. It’s part of our mission,” adds Amer. “We are well aware of the Protected Area status, but we are on the borders of this restricted area. And we do plan on developing the area with certain restrictions to save the environment.” 

 

According to Amer, eco-friendly development uses less concrete, energy and carbon in building. Instead it uses biogas, bigger windows for lighting and as many recycled building blocks as possible. 

 

 

“There are lots of things that are taken into consideration, even the way the streets are designed,” says Amer. According to Amer, people going to Fayoum expect to see a certain ambiance, which means the development needs to suit what people expect. “So we are just completing the story for them,” he says, “not taking them to a city beside the desert.”

 

Amer’s plan is to do something for people who appreciate eco-tourism, people who would appreciate a development that is saving the environment as much as it can. 

 

While the name “Porto by Amer Group” is the lightening rod for environmentalists’ fire, Amer points out that his group is just one of 14 developers awarded plots to develop along Lake Qarun. He feels what the activists are really protesting against is development in the allocated land in general, not against Amer Group as a company. That said, he still believes their information is misleading.

 

“The government didn’t sell the land to us, it has given us a 99-year lease. We leave whatever is built after the 99 years to the government.” 

Until now the government has not yet delivered the land to Amer Group, they still have procedures to tie up. But once the green light is given, Amer says they are ready to start work right away.

 

Amer stresses that there was no corruption of any sort in this deal. 

 

“It’s been said that former Minister of Tourism Zuhair Garanah, who is now in prison, gave us the land. But he’s not in prison because of Porto Fayoum. We got the land through a legal competition open for everybody to compete in,” says Amer. “Lots of companies from Egypt and outside of Egypt participated. Yes we were number one, but there were another 13 winners that were able to also demonstrate an eco-friendly project fit for the area. The price was fixed for everybody and the winners were those who had better ideas on saving the environment.”

 

Amer Group is also willing to go the extra mile by taking the opportunity to build the service center for the area. “Our plot of land will have the restaurants and the shopping,” Amer explains. “As usual, Porto is a hub for the place it’s built around, it caters services to others making their mission much easier. All they have to work on is residential units or hotel rooms.” 

 

 

 

The hotel rooms and residential luxury suites that Amer mentions are exactly what NCE and Friends of Lake Qarun want to keep out of Fayoum. They would rather see the area in question turned into an outdoor museum that sustains itself through sophisticated tourism development. 

 

Conservation organizations say they are not against development in Fayoum, they are aware that it is a poor governorate that needs the help. They just want to make sure it’s done in the right way: to bring millions to the country while sustaining Egypt’s heritage.

 

“The problem with the Amer Group situation is that we want the area that has been allocated to them and the other investors to be untouched. So any plans that fall short of giving the land back or turning it into a geopark or open-air museum are not going to be acceptable for us,” says NCE member and cofounder of Friends of Lake Qarun, Rebecca Porteous Fahmi. “I don’t believe they had bad intentions when they took this land. They want to bring investment into the area, which is understandable. It’s a conflict that arises all over the world between big businesses and conservationists.” 

 

These eco-friendly plans Fahmi discusses include less construction, more conservation, all the while bringing in tourists and employing the locals.

 

“If you tell most locals there’s going to be a lovely prestigious tourism project and it’s going to give your village employment and money, of course they’ll probably say they want it. But that is a very biased way of putting it,” adds Fahmi. “The kind of development we’re proposing would engage the local community much longer and in a much more significant way. Not as servants to capitalism but helpers of their area as bird guides, taking people on their rowboats and guides for the sites.”

 

 The geopark they have in mind is a reserve of sorts that is not just interested in artifacts, but also the landscape and the communities living within it, and the industries working within it. 

 

“It’s like a whole vision of a protected area, where the local community are working symbiotically with the things that are there,” says Fahmi. “In national parks in South Africa, they have that one tiny little dirt track that cars line up in to get in, and people pay so much money to go see that stuff without ruining it.”

 

Fahmi believes the development plans set out for Fayoum are copycats of the developments in Sinai and the North Coast “on a filth drain of a lake” that will ruin what people seek in Fayoum. 

 

Fahmi claims that despite opposition from activists, Fayoum’s former governor, the Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs and the the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) — whose mission is to protect and promote the cultural heritage of Egypt — allegedly gave the green light to the Tourism Development Authority (TDA) to host the December 2010 bid in which that Amer Group and the 13 other investors competed. 

 

Then-Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass was criticized by activists for the move that allegedly allowed for the land to be given to the investors. Fahmi acknowledges that Hawass has denied accusations that he gave permission for the Fayoum sales, but says, “Our understanding of the go-ahead was based on reports from newspapers over the last 18 months. Hawass basically agreed to the development on the condition that a two-year excavation take place first.” 

 

Khaled Saad, an archaeologist with SCA, led the two-year mission in 2009 and 2010. Saad said in an interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm published on June 1 that the SCA was aware of the treasures the area had, and that they had refused to give the TDA full authority there without the excavation, which was backed by Hawass. 

 

 “The excavation was supposedly going to take everything out of the ground and put it in a museum. But from the point of view of archeologists and scientists working in the area, that is just complete nonsense,” says Fahmi. “It’s particularly nonsense in this case because the kind of evidence in Gebel Qattrani is dependent on the stuff remaining on the site. It’s not just the objects themselves.”

 

Fahmi gives the example of Neolithic evidence of agriculture found in the area, crucial to understand the evolution from hunter-gatherer to agriculture. All such evidence is either found on the surface or just 1 centimeter deep, meaning any disruption to the area may jeopardize the evidence.

 

Saad is also quoted saying that the strip excavated only represents 10 percent of the whole area; “to give this area justice, we would need 10 years to excavate it thoroughly.” In the mere 10 percent excavated, they discovered remains of fossilized whales and artifacts of all sorts that date to prehistoric times, literally on the surface. Saad confirmed the activist’s idea of transforming the area into an open-air museum to better study the evolution found there.  

 

“We want the whole area to be given back to the Egyptian government,” Fahmi says. “The investors could give back this plot of land because of all this heritage and maybe take up another plot of area that isn’t a threat to the environment and put all their amazing resources and experience in it.” 

 

 

Fahmi feels it would be a shame to see this area that was given to Amer Group and the other investors destroyed. “Gebel Qattrani is extraordinary. If you go visit the place your heart just opens up,” she says. “You see 42 million years of the earth’s history and human development there in front of you.”  

 

 

 

 

 

With the recent changes in the country following the January 25 Revolution, environmentalists are optimistic that the renewed sense of nationalism will get people to start paying more attention to environmental concerns. And maybe even push to get things done. 

 

Tourism Minster Mounir Fakhry AbdelNour confirms that “the project is at a standstill right now,” which may be seen as a beacon of hope for activists for the moment.

 

The future of the projects planned in this sleepy governorate is unknown as of press time. And so is the culprit of who really is to blame for leasing the land. 

 

But according to Sattar, a permanent resident in Fayoum, “[under] the old regime, anyone who had money could do anything they wanted. The government sold the country. I don’t think this will happen again after the revolution. I understand that things don’t improve overnight, change won’t come until later but I am hopeful.”

 

Even with the significant drop in tourists visiting Fayoum, and a large part of the population unemployed and seeking employment opportunities, Sattar believes that once they understand the real cost of such projects, they won’t like it. 

 

“Only geologists can determine whether something should be built there, but they need at least 30 years to find out if something’s there. They should turn it into an open-air museum. If they do it right, it won’t harm the country, the history or the environment,” says Sattar. “But you can’t come with a foreign body into a natural place and expect it to be okay.” Et

“Our role is development. We are concerned about developing our country, and Fayoum is one of the most beautiful areas in our country.”

 

“[Under] the old regime, anyone who had money could do anything they wanted. The government sold the country. I don’t think this will happen again after the revolution. ”