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How Eroded Is the Coast?
North Africa’s coasts are necessary to protect these assets so future generations can benefit from intact beaches. Such policies are crucial for the economic prosperity of countries, the integrity of their natural habitats and biodiversity, and the resilience of coastal assets and communities to the challenges ahead posed by climate change.
HOW ERODED IS THE COAST?
The coastlines of the Middle East and North Africa, which stretch for nearly 25,000 kilometers, are central to the region’s economy and history. These coastal and marine environments vary widely.
The Red Sea has an average depth of nearly 1,500 meters and a maximum depth of 2,600 meters.2 It has a rich marine life and many shorelines that are still sparsely populated except in its far northern reaches and near the cities of Jeddah and Yanbu, Saudi Arabia; Port Sudan, Sudan; and Al-Hodeidah, Republic of Yemen. In contrast, the inner RSA—that is, the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment (ROPME) Sea Area, which extends over 1,000 kilometers from the Strait of Hormuz to the northern coast of the Islamic Republic of Iran—has an average depth of only 35 meters. The inner RSA is characterized by heavy ship traffic and several large, rapidly growing, and densely populated cities. The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of 1,500 meters with a relatively narrow continental shelf across its southern and eastern shores. The western and eastern Mediterranean coasts have been populated for millennia and include some of the world’s most ancient cities, while the North Atlantic has Morocco’s largest city on its shoreline.
Although none of the Middle East and North Africa economies is landlocked, the lengths of their coastlines vary considerably. Jordan has less than 30 kilometers of shoreline on the Gulf of Aqaba, which provides it with access to the Red Sea, whereas Saudi Arabia has more than 7,500 kilometers of shoreline; the Arab Republic of Egypt, 2,900 kilometers; and the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2,800 kilometers.
Significance of the Coasts to the Region’s Populations and Economies
Coasts are home to large parts of the Middle East and North Africa’s population. Almost 50 percent of the region’s population lived within 100 kilometers of the coast in 2020. The total coastal population is expected to increase by about 18 percent by 2035 (Maul and Duedall 2019). In 13 of the region’s economies, over 60 percent of the population lives within
100 kilometers of the coast, ranging from around 6 percent in Iraq to over 30 percent in Saudi Arabia, more than 80 percent in Oman and Tunisia, and 100 percent in Kuwait, Lebanon, Malta, and Qatar.
Moreover, 10 of the region’s capital cities are located on or near coastlines. Other major cities and economic centers on the coasts include Alexandria in Egypt and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, but smaller towns and villages cluster along the coast as well. Population growth has increased pressure on the natural environment of the coasts and coastal wetlands as well as on urban water and wastewater systems and marine-water quality.
Given the concentration of settlements, the Middle East and North Africa’s coasts are centers for economic activity, as in the following examples:
• In Morocco, two-thirds of the population and 90 percent of industries are located on or near the coast, and coastal tourism, largely dependent on intact beaches, is a major contributor to the national economy (Snoussi et al. 2009).
• In Tunisia, more than 83 percent of industrial firms occupy specialized industrial zones along the Sahel coast (Tunisia’s central coast), and 90 percent of the country’s total economic output is achieved in nearshore areas (Albrecht-Heider 2020).
• In Djibouti, the city-state’s US$2 billion economy is driven by a stateof-the-art port complex that serves as the principal port of entry to
Ethiopia. Given its location at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, it hosts military bases and supports global antipiracy efforts.
• In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, several city-states are dependent for their existence on their coastal locations (Tolba and
Saab 2009).
• In Egypt, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria hosts about 40 percent of the country’s industrial capacity and is an important summer resort (El-Raey 2010).
Moreover, regional transportation hubs such as ports and other economic centers occupy low-lying coastal areas throughout the Middle East and North Africa (Schäfer 2013)—many of which are vulnerable to sea level rise (SLR) and coastal erosion.
In some of the region’s economies, much of the population depends on marine resources that are threatened by further environmental degradation. The fishing industry is economically significant in several, including Morocco, Oman, and the Republic of Yemen. In Morocco, for instance, fisheries and connected industries contributed around 2.3 percent to national gross domestic product (GDP) and created employment
for almost 700,000 people (directly and indirectly) in 2014 (FAO 2020). Morocco is also developing its aquaculture industry. Its fish production in capture fisheries dominates the region, representing about 40 percent of more than 4 million tons of fish landed every year in the Middle East and North Africa (OECD and FAO 2018). Furthermore, coastal areas are important to the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in the region—many of them among the vulnerable and poor—who work in small-scale fisheries and aquaculture, both of which have been increasing substantially in recent years (OECD and FAO 2018; Sieghart, Mizener, and Gibson 2019).
Tourism is a major pillar of the economy in many of the region’s economies, accounting for a substantial portion of GDP in several—and in some, adding up to well over 10 percent of economic output. For example, in Morocco, tourism and connected value chains contributed almost 19 percent of GDP, with employment in these sectors making up 19.6 percent of total employment in 2017 (Kasmi et al. 2020). Similarly, in Tunisia, the tourism sector offered jobs for around 2.3 million people, and economic activity amounted to 14.2 percent of GDP in 2018 (Saidani 2019). In recent years, many of the region’s economies, including Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, have experienced rebounds from previous slumps in tourist arrivals following political incidents. However, the COVID-19 crisis led to sharp reductions in tourist numbers throughout the Middle East and North Africa (box 5.1). It is important that the tourism sector—which is also dependent on intact, clean coasts—emerge from this crisis and recover.
For several of these countries, intact beaches and coastlines are vital to their attractiveness to tourists. For example, Djerba Island off the coast of Tunisia accounts for about one-fourth of all of Tunisia’s international tourist arrivals (Carboni, Perelli, and Sistu 2014), and tourism in Tunisia as a whole is focused strongly on coastal areas (Widz and Brzezińska-Wójcik 2020). Similarly, in Egypt, coastal tourism has grown significantly in recent decades, bringing economic benefits to host communities but also increasing environmental pressures (Abdel-Latif, Ramadan, and Galal 2012). Losing the natural assets represented by beaches can severely harm the tourism sector by diminishing the number of tourists or threatening tourism-related infrastructure.
Coastal erosion and beach loss are global phenomena with regional hot spots, including the southern Mediterranean. Historically, significant shares of sandy beach areas around the world have eroded (lost area), while other have accreted (gained area) or stayed stable (Luijendijk et al. 2018).
