Thirst revolution: practices of contestation and mobilisation in rural Egypt

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. We use a political ecology approach to understand ecological distribution conflicts and the perceived unjust distribution of water that was behind the social unrest. The article includes a classification of local-scale water-based protests in rural Egypt, which breaks down their causes and shows how the protest movement is embedded within biophysical, water management and agriculture development politics.