Thursday, June 20, 2013

Nile Dilemma: Between Development & Water Security



by


Over the last weeks, the waves of dispute have been disturbing the often calm waters of the river Nile. Ethiopia, one of the source countries of the river, has started diverting the Blue Nile, a tributary which supplies most of the river's waters, in order to proceed with the Renaissance mega dam project. The sudden move, taken upon the return of the Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi from Addis Ababa, led to a heated debate in Egypt and sparked a war of words between the two countries. Although, the project is not new, the river’s two most populous nations have failed to reach consensus whether politically or regarding the technical aspects of the dam. Seen by Ethiopia as crucial to its development and viewed by Egypt as an imminent threat, the Renaissance dam is apparently triggering an alarming water dispute on the shores of the world’s longest river.


The Ethiopian government’s decision to divert the Blue Nile, declared on the 27th of May, is a preparatory step to build its national project known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The announcement comes before a tripartite committee, consisted of Ethiopian, Sudanese, Egyptian and international experts, declares the findings of its dam assessment study including an evaluation of the project’s impact on the two downstream countries Sudan and Egypt. Situated only 40 km’s away from the Sudanese border, the dam is expected to generate about 5,250 megawatts of electricity after its completion in an estimated 4 years period. The Grand dam means a lot to the East African nation who seeks to be the continent’s first electricity exporter. It is the biggest project in a development plan comprising 33 dams, which the country seeks to accomplish in order to improve its irrigation system as well as produce electricity. The GERD is not only the most important of these dams, with a cost of 4.8$ billion, but also the most problematic. For years, Ethiopia’s plan to build such mega projects by the Nile has been faced by rejection from the Nile’s downstream riparian countries, Sudan & Egypt, who regard them as a threat to their water share, set by historic international treaties and agreements. 

As a matter of fact, the water share of the Nile Basin countries is a complicated issue whose roots date back to the mid 20th century. Measuring the average annual flow of the Nile water, Sudan and Egypt signed an agreement in 1959 to allocate the 84 billion cubic meters that reach them, at 18.5 and 55.5 billion cubic meters respectively. The remaining 10 billion cubic meters is lost due to evaporation. But as the world’s largest river, the Nile means much more than these numbers. The amount of rain falling inside the Nile Basin is estimated at an annual rate of 1,660 billion cubic meters. However, only about 4% are exploited including Egypt’s large quota.  Not being a part of the agreement, Ethiopia and other basin countries decided to make a new framework for the use of this exploited portion, regardless to the six treaties signed during the British and Italian colonization (of Egypt & Ethiopia respectively ) between 1891 and 1929 or the 1959 agreement. In 2010, four countries signed the Entebbe agreement and were later joined by other basin countries. Boycotted by Egypt and Sudan, the two countries insisted that the signatories shall not seek to minimize their water share; a practically impossible demand since the Entebbe agreement mainly targets the redistribution of the Nile Basin countries’ shares.  Consequently, the two countries have always been allied in their rejection to the GERD. Yet Sudan recently changed its stance on the project. The Sudanese government discovered that the dam may be beneficial in terms of regulating the water flow and therefore minimizing the impacts of the annual summer season floods. It will also prevent the silt from perturbing the Sudanese small hydroelectric dams’ tribunes. Besides, Ethiopia promised it will sell Sudan electricity at prime cost.  

Egypt has therefore found itself on its own and in discord with another populous nation whose interests in development contradicts with its interests of national and water security. In fact, each of the two countries has its own needs, solutions, perspectives and challenges.  


Ethiopia's tributaries supply about 85 % of the waters of the Nile through the Blue Nile, known locally as the Abay River. Being on a large hill, the country is full of waterfalls through which the water flows to the North towards Sudan and Egypt. Yet the country suffers from primitive infrastructure especially when it comes to electricity. According the World Bank, in 2010, only 17 % of the country's 84.7 million people had access to electricity. Trying to reverse the situation, the Ethiopian government put an ambitious plan not only to provide 100% of the population with electricity by 2018, but also to be the continent’s first hydropower exporter.  Launching the GERD project in April 2011, the late Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, proposed the establishment of a Tripartite Committee, including experts from the three countries, as a good will gesture to build trust among riparian countries. As a response to concerns raised by Egypt & Sudan, the committee, which started its work in May 2011, aimed at assessing the dam’s impacts over them.
Meanwhile the Ethiopian government ran fundraising campaigns and sold bonds in order to finance the project. To Ethiopians, the project became hence a milestone to future development and a national project to which they shall all contribute. About $350 million were raised between April and September 2011 from civil servants, private sector employees, students and private business people as well as Ethiopians in the Diaspora. The government held celebrations and gave awards to various individuals and organizations in recognition of their contribution to the fundraising efforts.  

On the one hand, Ethiopian media highlights the country’s right to develop itself exploiting its own resources. Sometimes, a comparison is made between Egypt’s High Dam project in Aswan built in the 60’s and the GERD project to point out for how long has Egypt been solely benefiting from the Nile and inciting a change to this “unfair” situation. On the other hand, as much as the GERD might seem like a national project, it isn’t subject to unanimity. In fact, in order for the government to proceed with its dam building projects, amongst which the most important is GERD, it had to evacuate around half a million indigenous people who live in the dam’s building areas to other zones which aren’t convenient to their pastoral activities. Most of the evacuations have been done forcefully and amid intimidation by local authorities, according to international rights groups, such as HRW, who sees that the country’s hydropower policies are accompanied with human right violations.  Protest to the project has sometimes reached the extent that the Oromo community refugees in Egypt, demonstrated outside the UNHCR offices in Cairo calling for the stoppage of the project. The project hasn’t as well gained the unanimous support of the environmentalist organizations which have warned from the dam’s effect and accused the Ethiopian government of not conducting enough studies on its ecological impact.

Nevertheless, as the committee presented the final report of its long study earlier this month, the Ethiopian media positively highlighted that “the report indicates that the design of the GERD is based on international standards and principles…..[and] that the Dam offers high benefit for all the three countries and would not cause significant harm on both the lower riparian countries.” But that wasn’t what the Egyptian media highlighted, which indicates how deep is still the rift between the two countries, despite the declared efforts.




According to Egyptian experts on the tripartite committee, the report recommended more studies. Local media pointed out that the studies were “incomplete”, especially when it comes to the consequences in case of the collision of the concrete dam; a vital part in any mega dam study.  But Egypt’s fears far exceed the collision of the dam. While the rainfall in some of the Nile Basin countries can reach 20,000 millimeter, Egypt’s share of rainfall, does not exceed 20 millimeters. The country’s current share of the Nile, seen as the lion share of the whole river, is not even enough for its growing population needs.  According to the Egyptian government, by 2017, Egypt’s annual water needs will rise to 86.2 billion cubic meters from the current 71.4 billion cubic meters. Egypt consumes its full share and makes up for its extra needs by using the remaining of Sudan’s share, by recycling water, and by using any extra reserves it has in the 162 billion cubic meters Lake Nasser behind the Aswan High Dam. In fact, it might be surprising to know that Egypt, with its current rate of 860 cubic meters annually / person, is below the water poverty line set at 1,000 cubic meters annually/ person. Furthermore, any possible scarcity in the Nile waters will certainly lead to demographic changes. For over 5000 years, the Egyptian civilization and population have been installed on the river’s shore with about 96% of the country’s current population living around the Nile valley which represents 5% of Egyptian land, mainly constituted of desert. Hence, the country’s struggle for its water share is almost a struggle of existence.  That’s why the consecutive Egyptian administrations have always been depending on the carrot and stick approach. They invested in Ethiopia with about $2.2 billion, and put the country on the list of places where the Egyptian Foreign Ministry Fund provides medical and logistical assistance, in order to gain ground in the Horn of Africa nation. They also resorted to military intervention threats when needed.




As the people might not be aware of many of the previous figures and numbers, they have been angry for many other reasons. The performance of the government, led by the former Minister or Irrigation, raised many questions on how competent it is as the cabinet neither declared any strategy, nor proposed any plans to tackle this matter. Moreover, the Egyptian public has been confused by the various opinions given by scientists and professors, who sometimes exaggerate and other times trivialize the project and its impact on their lives. While some scientists claim the project would dry Egypt’s Nile and ask for a military operation, other allege that all Egypt has to worry about is the period to fill the dam’s reservoir, confirming this is a negotiable issue.  However, the lack of the government’s transparency and the technical unclarity weren’t the only reasons Egyptians have been reacting furiously to this topic.




The construction of the GERD began in April 2011, only two months after the fall of the Mubarak regime and in the middle of political disturbance. It has been considered as a slap on the face of a weakening state that was drowning in its own internal problems. And again, the Ethiopian government declared the diversion of the Blue Nile, upon the return of an Egyptian delegation headed by the president from Addis Ababa. Describing the step as surprising, the Egyptian Minister of Irrigation, who was in the delegation, denied being informed about it. Moreover, the fact that Addis Ababa declared the diversion before the tripartite committee’s report meant for many Egyptians that Ethiopia does not count a lot on the committee’s opinion and will build the dam anyway. Not to mention the common belief that Israeli experts are contributing to this project and deliberately harming the country. No evidence confirms such allegations, but such a conviction is based on the fact that MASHAV (Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation) funds selected irrigation projects in Ethiopia, a topic usually raised by the Egyptian media when talking about the East African country.





All these elements led to a mounting discourse of war on both the official and public level. In a scandalous “wrongly” aired meeting, between the president and the chiefs of several political parties, many of the proposed solutions to the “Nile Crisis” were about military intervention or destabilizing Ethiopia by the General Intelligence Service units. As shocking as the meeting and the proposals were, many Egyptians do support a military intervention bearing in mind that the strict threatening tone by the previous president and his predecessors was what halted the Ethiopian projects for decades. Already burdened with the frequent power cuts that started few months ago, this tired population doesn’t want to add water shortage to the list of its daily concerns. As the topic got more politicized domestically, the Egyptian president has lately declared that “all options are possible”, a sentence which sparked a war of words between the Egyptian government and its Ethiopian counterpart, and even the Ugandan government in support of Ethiopia.



However, any military action by Egypt will face a series of difficulties. Distance is already a major obstacle and logistics are very challenging. Egypt will have to either acquire aerial refueling capabilities or another country’s permission to launch an attack from its land. A Wikileaks cable stated that Cairo had previously threatened to bomb new hydro-infrastructure initiatives on the Blue Nile back in 2009 and 2010 and was discussing with Sudan if it could launch such attacks from Sudanese airfields, an option which might cause political turmoil in the region. Apart from direct military intervention, sending highly trained special operations unit to sabotage the construction would also be a very politically complicated and logistically challenging plan. 




The current tension between Egypt and Ethiopia shows the difficulty of reaching a future agreement on allocation of the Nile's waters between all of its 10 riparian states. It also shows how the contradiction between development, on the one side, and water security, on the other side, can be the pattern of tomorrow’s water conflicts. Although still unclear, the steps adopted by each country will determine how future disputes amongst the Nile basin countries can be regulated, whether by using force or by resorting to international law and arbitration. The role media has been playing in both countries regarding this issue hasn’t been constructive and may complicate the conclusion of any future consensus.  Egypt sure has many cards to play before military intervention and Ethiopia certainly can correspond to Egypt’s technical considerations on the project.  It is true resource scarcity can trigger conflict, but it is also true it can be a driving force for mutual cooperation and development.



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