by
Ahmed Abou Taleb
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.
