Sharjah24 - AFP: Within a few decades, Alexandria, Egypt's most famous second city and largest harbor, may submerge.
With its land sinking, and the sea rising due to global warming, the metropolis Alexander the Great founded on the Nile Delta is teetering on the brink.
Even by the United Nations' best case scenario, a third of the city will be underwater or uninhabitable by 2050, with 1.5 million of its six million people forced to flee their homes.
Its ancient ruins and historic treasures are also in grave danger from the Mediterranean.
Already hundreds of Alexandrians have had to abandon apartments weakened by flooding in 2015 and again in 2020.
Every year the city sinks by more than three millimetres, undermined by dams on the Nile that hold back the river silt that once consolidated its soil and by gas extraction offshore.
Meanwhile, the sea is rising.
The Mediterranean could rise a metre (3.2 feet) within the next three decades, according to the most dire prediction of the UN's panel of climate experts, the IPCC.
That would inundate "a third of the highly productive agricultural land in the Nile Delta", as well as "cities of historical importance, such as Alexandria", it said.
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