In my last blog post, I wrote about water management in transboundary countries. The challenges lie in the fact that all neighboring countries have rights of availability but can use them differently and thus disadvantage other countries. Today I will look at the Nile basin, which contains ten countries.
There were some key transboundary water agreements in 1966 (Helsinki Rules), 1997 (UN Convention) and 2009 (Law of Transboundary Aquifers) (Thompson, 2019).
When I try to summarize this, the laws ensure sustainable and balanced use. But it isn’t that easy. The disagreements are mainly between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt. More than 300 million people rely on Niles water. In 2011 Ethiopia launched a 4.8 billion project called Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD), close to the Sudanian border (TRT World).
The dam shall solve the problems of food and water insecurity and energy shortage in Ethiopia and the neighbouring area. Belonging that Ethiopia has agreements with the neighboring countries which will also benefit from the mega project. But no agreement has yet been reached with one country: Egypt (TRT World).
Back in 1874, there was a water war between Egypt and Ethiopia, which lasted two years and Ethiopia has won. After that colonialism hat a massive impact on water accessibility in the basin.
2011 instability caused by the Egyptian revolution, provided the perfect situation to launch the project. Egypt relies almost completely on the Nile water. Cairo is suffering from a waterfall and the Egypt government expressed its concern about further falling because that will lead to catastrophic consequences for the Egyptian population and nature. A further falling is very likely as Ethiopian builds a reservoir that reduces Egyptians water flows (TRT World). Reduced flow by 2% will lead to a loss of 200000 acres of land. One acre makes one family survive and more than 1 million people won't have work anymore. (BBC, 2018).
Because of that the Egyptian president as-Sisi tried to negotiate with the Ethiopian president Teschome. The situations came even more intense because Sudan supports the mega projects. These negotiations lasted from 2014-2017, failed and isolated Egypt (TRT World).
The problem is that Egypt cannot do more than start a war, which would be too extreme and probably would not lead to the solution of the problem. Cooperation and further negotiations would be most useful. At this moment I would like to quote a line of a BBC article: “But when issues like nationalism and the relative strength and importance of countries is concerned, it muddies the water”. It is difficult to fully understand the negotiations from my perspective, but as I could read from my sources, history and pride play an important role in the negotiations on both sides. This, of course, does not make a balanced and neutral cooperation any easier.
This case shows that in the fight for water it is both possible to reach agreement, as is the case in the neighbouring countries around Ethiopia. However, these countries are smaller and likely to have been dependent on an agreement. On the other hand, there can be no agreement, as can be seen in the case of Egypt. While the water level is falling more and more and the population is suffering more and more from the consequences, the government simply cannot reach an agreement. Since Ethiopia has a new president since 2018, I am curious how the situation will change.
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| Nile River basin |
There were some key transboundary water agreements in 1966 (Helsinki Rules), 1997 (UN Convention) and 2009 (Law of Transboundary Aquifers) (Thompson, 2019).
When I try to summarize this, the laws ensure sustainable and balanced use. But it isn’t that easy. The disagreements are mainly between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt. More than 300 million people rely on Niles water. In 2011 Ethiopia launched a 4.8 billion project called Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD), close to the Sudanian border (TRT World).
 |
| GERD |
Back in 1874, there was a water war between Egypt and Ethiopia, which lasted two years and Ethiopia has won. After that colonialism hat a massive impact on water accessibility in the basin.
2011 instability caused by the Egyptian revolution, provided the perfect situation to launch the project. Egypt relies almost completely on the Nile water. Cairo is suffering from a waterfall and the Egypt government expressed its concern about further falling because that will lead to catastrophic consequences for the Egyptian population and nature. A further falling is very likely as Ethiopian builds a reservoir that reduces Egyptians water flows (TRT World). Reduced flow by 2% will lead to a loss of 200000 acres of land. One acre makes one family survive and more than 1 million people won't have work anymore. (BBC, 2018).
Because of that the Egyptian president as-Sisi tried to negotiate with the Ethiopian president Teschome. The situations came even more intense because Sudan supports the mega projects. These negotiations lasted from 2014-2017, failed and isolated Egypt (TRT World).
The problem is that Egypt cannot do more than start a war, which would be too extreme and probably would not lead to the solution of the problem. Cooperation and further negotiations would be most useful. At this moment I would like to quote a line of a BBC article: “But when issues like nationalism and the relative strength and importance of countries is concerned, it muddies the water”. It is difficult to fully understand the negotiations from my perspective, but as I could read from my sources, history and pride play an important role in the negotiations on both sides. This, of course, does not make a balanced and neutral cooperation any easier.
This case shows that in the fight for water it is both possible to reach agreement, as is the case in the neighbouring countries around Ethiopia. However, these countries are smaller and likely to have been dependent on an agreement. On the other hand, there can be no agreement, as can be seen in the case of Egypt. While the water level is falling more and more and the population is suffering more and more from the consequences, the government simply cannot reach an agreement. Since Ethiopia has a new president since 2018, I am curious how the situation will change.
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