Between 2007 and 2018, water-based protests in Egypt received extensive visibility in media headlines. These protests were first sparked by events in a village in the Nile Delta in 2007; since this demonstration, water-based protests, known as Thawrat al-‘Atash or the Thirst Revolution, have become widespread. Nevertheless, the vast majority of academic research looking at social movements in Egypt has focused on urban protests. This paper investigates the dynamics of water-focused protests in rural Egypt.

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to examine the impacts of system-wide crises on key supply sectors such as water, energy and food. These sectors are becoming increasingly interlinked in environmental policy-making and with regard to achieving supply security. There is a pressing need for a systematization of impacts and responses beyond individual disruptions. This paper provides a holistic assessment of the implications of COVID-19 on the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus.