The Nile is a
river shared by ten riparian States that are among the ten poorest in the world
and that necessitate the development of the Nile Water resources by all
riparian States. The 1929 agreement was signed between
Great Britain (albeit representing its colony, Egypt) and Great Britain, which
also represented at the time Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Sudan.
The document gave Cairo (under colonial administration by London) the right to
veto projects higher up the Nile that would affect its water share. The treaty for the full utilization of the
Nile, concluded between Egypt and the Sudan in 1959, divides the entire
flow of the Nile between the two countries. Other riparian countries, notably
Ethiopia - a country with a population of 90 million today and which
contributes about 86% of the annual discharge of the Nile - to date use only
less than 1% of it.
Ethiopia, a nation
known as the water tower of North-East Africa is the epicenter of famines.
Surface water resources in Ethiopia flow in 12 major river basins. It is
estimated that an average of 122.19 billion cubic meters of water is annually
discharged from the Abay (Nile), Tekeze, Shebelle, Baro and Omo-Gibe river basins
with an estimated 3.5 million ha of irrigable land. Hence, the long-term
objective is to establish once and for all a nation that can ensure its
citizenry human development and human security.
In 1984, a famine began to strike Ethiopia with apocalyptic force.
Westerners watched in horror as the images of death filled their TV screens:
the rows of fly-haunted corpses, the skeletal orphans crouched in pain, the
villagers desperately scrambling for bags of grain dropped from the sky. What
started out as a trickle of aid turned into a billion-dollar flood. (Serrill, MS, TIME –CNN, 1987) For more than two decades,
nearly half of Ethiopians have experienced some degree of food insecurity and
malnutrition. Approximately five million are chronically food insecure, i.e.,
unable at some time in any year to secure an adequate supply of food for
survival.
Ethiopia could
not develop its water resources to feed its needy population, mainly because of
policies of international financial institutions (IFIs), augured on British
colonial dictat, which have made it
difficult for upper riparian countries to secure finance without the consent of
Egypt. Foreign direct investments for the development of the Nile waters have
been almost out of the question. The downstream riparian States, therefore,
have maintained the right to veto the development endeavors of the upstream
States. The Nile status quo was such that Ethiopia, whose name has almost
become synonymous with drought and famine, is condemned, while two downstream
States have almost utilized the entire water flow. Moreover, Sudan and Egypt
introduce new mega-irrigation projects even further. As a result, upper
riparian countries are naturally left with very little choice other than to
resort to a reciprocal measure of unilateralism even if as feared by many that
it may trigger conflict, it becomes a better drive for collaboration (Milas,
2013)
For more than five decades Egypt’s political
leaders have claimed ‘historic rights’ to control of the Nile waters, punctuated
by threats of war against any upstream country that might attempt to build dams
or water infrastructure on the river. This became a prominent feature of
Egypt’s Nile policy after the construction of the Aswan High Dam by the Soviet
Union. The late President Anwar Sadat realigned his country with the West, made
peace with Israel and announced that the only thing that could bring Egypt into
war again would be if any country threatened Egypt’s control of the Nile
waters. Egypt’s peace agreement with Israel opened Cairo’s way to aid
agreements with the United States and to Egyptian access to strategic positions
in the World Bank and other IFIs, which they could influence against lending
for water infrastructure in upstream states without the agreement of downstream
states. To build it, they would need loans from the IFIs, which were unlikely
to be available without Egypt’s agreement, especially in view of propaganda
that such loans might possibly lead to war. Now however, there are many other
sources of funding, like China. (Ibid)
Now that Ethiopia is
building The Renaissance Dam expected to produce around 6000 megawatts of
electricity in the Blue Nile Gorge near the border with Sudan, Cairo is nervous
that the waters of the Nile might be in jeopardy. While Egyptian President
Mohamed Morsi has tried to dampen down embarrassing suggestions that Egypt
might use military power over disagreements concerning the Nile waters, the hard-talk
from the Egyptian side. This is despite the fact that the report of an independent
panel of experts from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan had concluded that the
hydropower dam would not significantly reduce the flow of water reaching Sudan
and Egypt, as the water merely has to pass through the dam’s turbines and come
out the downstream side to produce hydroelectricity.
President Museveni has sternly stressed that the biggest threat to the Nile is continued under-development in the
tropics i.e. lack of electricity and lack of industrialization. On account of these two, peasants cut the bio-mass for fuel and
invade the forests to expand primitive agriculture. Here in Uganda, the
peasants destroy 40 billion cubic metres of wood per annum for firewood. They
also invade the wetlands to grow rice, he noted. This interferes with the transpiration that is crucial for rain
formation. Our experts have told me that 40 percent of our rain comes from
local moisture - meaning from our lakes and wetlands. Ironically, said
Museveni, the Egyptians wanted to drain
the wetlands in South Sudan through the Jonglei canal. It was one of the causes for the people of South Sudan to wage war
against Khartoum, which was collaborating with Egypt’s misguided and dangerous
policies of that time (Allafrica.com, 2013)
http://issuu.com/costantinos/docs/the_nile_conundrum__ethiopia_and_eg,
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