Water resources management in modern Egypt, is a complex process that involves multiple stakeholders who use water for irrigation, municipal and industrial water supply, hydropower generation and navigation. In addition, the waters of the Nile support aquatic ecosystems that are threatened by abstraction and pollution. Egypt also has substantial fossil groundwater resources in the Western Desert.
A key problem of water resources management in Egypt is the imbalance between increasing water demand and limited supply. To ensure future water availability coordination with the nine upstream Nile riparian countries is essential. The Nile Basin Initiative provides a forum for such cooperation. In the 1990s the government launched three mega-projects to increase irrigation on "new lands". They are located in the Toshka area (the "New Valley"), on the fringe of the Western Nile Delta, and in the Northern Sinai. These projects all require substantial amounts of water that can only be mobilized through better irrigation efficiency on already irrigated "old lands" as well as the reuse of drainage water and treated wastewater.
The management of the water supply in Egypt is expected to get more complicated as climate change increases the variability of weather, puts increasing pressure on upstream countries, and causes sea level rise which will cause saltwater intrusion and salinisation on delta lands.