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LIBYA'S DESERT WATER
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Richard Hollingham visits Great Man-Made River Project |
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Searching for oil in the desert, Libya found vast quantities of fresh water under the sand. A huge engineering project was inaugurated by Colonel Gaddafi, to pipe the water from the desert aquifers to the coastal cities. The Great Man-Made River is one of the largest civil engineering projects in the world, but it is almost unknown outside Libya. Richard Hollingham, one of the first western journalists to visit the project, describes his experiences.
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Water pours into the reservoir at Ajdabiya, North East Libya.
The Arabic text written on the concrete quotes the Koran:
'We create every living thing from water' |
Inaugurated in 1991, the Great Man-Made River consists of 5,000 kilometres of pipes carrying 6.5 million cubic metres of water a day from desert aquifers to cities and farms on the coast.
The water has the power to transform Libyan life and economy.
As well as providing Libyans with fresh, clean water, the country also has ambitious plans to develop a European market for early fruit and vegetables.
When, after almost six months of trying, reporter Richard Hollingham was finally given permission to visit the Great Man-Made River, he had no idea what sort of reception he would get.
UN Sanctions imposed on Libya after the Lockerbie bombings had only been lifted three years earlier, and diplomatic ties with the US had yet to be fully restored: how open would his Libyan hosts be? How much would they show him?
Worried that he might return to England with nothing, Richard decided to record whenever he could, even in his hotel room.
What he found was a country in transition.
Libya is changing, and the Great Man-Made River is playing a central role in those changes.
As well as providing Libya with technical expertise and know-how, the River is also fuelling economic change.
But it's not only Libya that's changing. Very quickly, Richard had to start revising his own opinions about Libya.
Rather than struggling to secure interview and having access to the project restricted by government officials, Richard found his hosts candid and obliging.
It soon became clear that there was a serious mismatch between his preconceptions of the country and his experiences when he got there.
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RELATED LINKS |
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Great Man-made River Authority
BBC News: 'Libya's thirst for "fossil water"' by producer John Watkins
BBC News: Country profle - Libya
BBC Science & Nature
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