GADDAFI'S ...
GREAT MAN-MADE RIVER PROJECT ...
DESTROYED BY NATO IN 2011.
“The wars of the 21st century will be fought over water”.
It was Muammar Gaddafi`s dream to provide fresh water for all Libyans and to make Libya self-sufficient in food production.
Muammar Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the 'Great Man-Made River project'.
In 1953 while drilling for oil in southern Libya,
workers found instead a huge freshwater sea beneath the sands,
a vast ocean called the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS),
which stretches beneath Libya, Egypt, Chad and Sudan.
The water had accumulated during the last ice age.
Its reserves are estimated to be the equivalent to about
500 years of Nile River flow
and are expected to last a thousand years.
GREAT MAN-MADE RIVER PROJECT ...
DESTROYED BY NATO IN 2011.
“The wars of the 21st century will be fought over water”.
It was Muammar Gaddafi`s dream to provide fresh water for all Libyans and to make Libya self-sufficient in food production.
Muammar Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the 'Great Man-Made River project'.
In 1953 while drilling for oil in southern Libya,
workers found instead a huge freshwater sea beneath the sands,
a vast ocean called the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS),
which stretches beneath Libya, Egypt, Chad and Sudan.
The water had accumulated during the last ice age.
Its reserves are estimated to be the equivalent to about
500 years of Nile River flow
and are expected to last a thousand years.
GREAT GADDAFI MAN-MADE RIVER
Western technicians said that Libya did not have the expertise
to exploit this underground ocean; but in the early 1980s
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi initiated the Great Man-Made River Authority,
a 25-billion-dollar project
to raise the water and pipe it across the desert.
to exploit this underground ocean; but in the early 1980s
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi initiated the Great Man-Made River Authority,
a 25-billion-dollar project
to raise the water and pipe it across the desert.
At the time of the NATO-led war against Libya in 2011, three phases of the Great Man-Made River Project were completed. The first and largest phase, providing two million cubic metres of water a day along a 1,200 km pipeline to Benghazi and Sirte.
In 1999, UNESCO accepted Libya’s offer to fund the Great Man-Made River International Water Prize, an award that rewards remarkable scientific research work on water usage in arid areas.
Many foreign nationals worked in Libya on the Great Man-Made River Project for decades. But after the start of NATO’s so-called humanitarian bombing of the North-African country in March 2011, most foreign workers have returned home. In July 2011, NATO not only bombed the Great Man-Made River water supply pipeline near Brega, but also destroyed the factory that produces the pipes to repair it, claiming in justification that it was used as “a military storage facility” and that “rockets were launched from there”. Six of the facility’s security guards were killed in the NATO attack, and the water supply for the 70% of the population who depend on the piped supply for personal use and for irrigation has been compromised with this damage to Libya’s vital infrastructure.
The construction on the last two phases of the Great Man-Made River Project were scheduled to continue over the next two decades, but NATO’s war on Libya has thrown the project’s future – and the wellbeing of the Libyan people – into great jeopardy.
A German language documentary shows the size and brilliance of the project:
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten