Nile Basin at a Turning Point as Political Changes Roil Balance of Power and Competing Demands Proliferate
3 Oct 2012
By Carolyn Lamere for Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP)
In 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat external pagefamously saidcall_made that "the only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water." Sadat's message was clear: the Nile is a matter of national security for Egypt.
Indeed, Egypt relies on the Nile for external page95 percent of its watercall_made. But it is not the only state with an interest in the world's longest river. There are 11 states in the Nile River basin, which stretches from Africa's Great Lakes region – Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – to the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands through South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea.
Each of these 11 countries has a different plan for the river, from Ethiopia's hydropower aspirations to Egypt’s cotton farming. And competition for Nile water is not limited to the countries of the basin, as states like external pageIndiacall_made and external pageSaudi Arabiacall_made have recently turned to large-scale land and agricultural investments in Ethiopia, South Sudan, and other East African countries to help feed their growing populations. Agriculture requires irrigation, and they will be vying for water rights too.
The situation is further complicated by recent political instability. Two long-time giants in the basin are no longer in power: Egyptian President external pageHosni Mubarak resignedcall_made after 30 years in power following protests in 2011, and Ethiopian Prime Minister external pageMeles Zenawi diedcall_made August 20, after 17 years in office.
The Arab Spring has made it unclear if Egypt is willing or able to enforce its long-held dominance of the region. Further downstream, the Great Lakes region is notoriously prone to conflict; Sudan and South Sudan are still clashing over a number of issues not settled by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement or the South’s subsequent secession; Ethiopia and Eritrea remain on edge since the formal end of their war in 2000; and Kenya, Burundi, the DRC, and Rwanda have had recent questionable elections and remain volatile.
Despite their differences, the Nile River basin countries have one thing in common: rapid growth, both economically and demographically, which is increasing demand for water across the board and lends urgency to negotiations for a common sharing agreement.
New Challenges to Historic Dominance
At the root of the current dynamic are agreements signed by Egypt with former colonial power Great Britain in external page1929call_made, and Sudan in external page1959call_made, which gave Egypt the lion’s share of the Nile as well as the power to veto any upstream projects which might threaten its access to water. Egypt claims these treaties give them the legal right to halt construction on projects like the external pageGrand Renaissance Damcall_made, a massive project recently begun in Ethiopia that would provide electricity to Ethiopia and surrounding states but also reduce downstream flow significantly.
However, as is the case elsewhere in Africa, the fact that many of the basin countries were governed by colonial powers during that period complicates things.
Many upstream countries did not gain their independence until the 1960s and were therefore excluded from initial allocation discussions. They claim the treaties are colonial relics and are no longer binding to newly independent countries. Ethiopia has been external pageespecially vocalcall_made in its opposition; although it was independent at the signing of the 1959 treaty and the Blue Nile, which originates in Ethiopia, external pageprovides 85 percentcall_made of the Nile’s water, they were not invited to negotiations.
The first modern attempt to come to a collective water sharing agreement was the external pageNile Basin Initiativecall_made (NBI), established in 1999. Although representatives of the then-nine member countries of the NBI met on a regular basis over the course of the next decade, negotiations external pagefailed to progresscall_made. Upstream countries had hoped to forge a new agreement which would give them more rights to Nile water than the 1959 agreement, but it soon became clear that Egypt had no intentions of yielding water to other riparian states, regardless of political situations when the first agreements were signed.
Relationships between NBI states deteriorated further in 2010 when Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania set off on their own and external pagesigned a new water distribution agreementcall_made to replace the 1959 treaty. Theexternal pageNile Cooperative Framework Agreementcall_made, also known as the Entebbe Agreement, prevents countries from using the flow of the Nile in ways which would harm downstream states, a principle which aligns external pagewith other trans-boundary river treatiescall_made. But importantly, the new treaty removes Egypt’s absolute veto power over upstream projects.
Unsurprisingly, the Entebbe Agreement has proven controversial, and Egypt, Sudan, and South Sudan – the downstream countries which benefit most from the colonial-era treaties – remain opposed to the new agreement.
The situation has been further complicated by the Arab Spring and Egyptian revolution. Burundi at first pledged not to sign the agreement external pageat the urging of Hosni Mubarakcall_made, then-president of Egypt. But external pageBurundi reneged on its promisecall_made just weeks after Mubarak was deposed in February of last year, gambling that Egypt’s domestic problems would keep it from retaliating. Burundi was the sixth country to sign the agreement, and the latest so far. The DRC has remained neutral, and Eritrea, as a country in the watershed but not situated along the Nile or one of its tributaries, has only observer status in the NBI and is thus not eligible to sign.
The NBI continues to meet and carry out standard functions – for example during a meeting in July, South Sudan was admitted as a new state, Ethiopian engineer external pageTeferra Beyene Asfawcall_made was appointed executive director, and a external pagenew five year plancall_made was approved – but little progress has been made towards a comprehensive agreement acceptable to all basin states.
Growing Demand, On the Continent and Abroad
The importance of the Nile’s waters – and Egypt's potential loss of hydrological veto power – is heightened by increased demand in the region.
Many of the Nile basin countries are experiencing rapid population growth; every country except Egypt has a external pagetotal fertility ratecall_made (TFR) above 4.5 children per women. Ethiopia’s TFR of 4.6 is at the low end, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo tops the list at 6.1. Egypt is not external pagegrowing as quicklycall_made as other riparian states, with a total fertility rate of 2.9, but scarcity is already a problem. In 2009, Egyptians had access to external pageonly 860 cubic meterscall_made per capita, well below the external pageUN threshold for water scarcitycall_made of 1,000 cubic meters, and external pageprotests over chronic water shortagescall_made have been reported.
Overall, the population of Nile Basin Initiative countries is projected to more than double over the next 40 years, from 429 million in 2012 to 945 million people. In other words, over the course of the next four decades more people will be born into the region than currently live there now.
external pageGrowingcall_made populations require more water, but so does growing affluence. While there is huge potential for development in the basin, lack of access to water and energy limit growth for upstream countries. For example, external pagethe World Bank reportscall_made that Ethiopia has experienced remarkable economic development over the past decade, with annual GDP growth rates reaching 11 percent, but last year, external pagehigh food and fuel pricescall_made contributed to a decreased growth rate of around seven percent, leading to external pagepublic protestscall_made over inflationary prices. Similarly, neighboring Uganda has recently experienced overall GDP growth rates of around seven percent, but external pagerapid population growthcall_made means that this has translated to only around a four percent growth in GDP per capita.
Energy production is an essential component of continued development, and another point of contention between upstream and downstream states. Egypt has external pagenatural gascall_made resources and Sudan and South Sudan have oil (although external pagedisputes over the ownership of key fieldscall_made and external pagetransportation out of the countrycall_made make it difficult to access at the moment), but upstream countries have far fewer energy options.
Uganda has sought to remedy this by building a hydropower station that only temporarily diverts the river and allows all water to continue downstream. The external pageBujagali Hydropower Projectcall_made, located on the White Nile near Lake Victoria, generates 250 megawatts of power. After full energy production began in June, William Groth of Bujagali Energy Limited noted the improvement over previous diesel-powered generators: "The energy we produce here with water is three times cheaper than what came from those generators, and it is cleaner, too," he external pagetold AllAfricacall_made.
Ethiopia, on the other hand, is building more aggressively. It began construction of the external pageGrand Renaissance Damcall_made, formerly known as the Grand Millennium Dam, on the Blue Nile in 2011. The massive project will produce 5,250 megawatts of energy – 21 times the production of Bujagali. It will also have a greater impact on the Nile. While the magnitude of the reduction of flow will depend on how quickly Ethiopia fills the dam, Egyptian officials are certain there will be severe consequences for their country. (Although Nile flow will be constant once the dam is filled, downstream countries will receive less water while the reservoir is filling.) A external pageUnited Arab Emirates-based papercall_made cites a former Egyptian water minister as saying that "the problems could range from bad to devastating."
Upstream, past Aswan High Dam, whose completion was a crucial moment in it’s own industrialization, Egypt also faces self-imposed water management issues. The government is encouraging external pageincreased cotton productioncall_made, even though the crop demands a great deal of water for successful cultivation. While some areas have become adept at implementing new irrigation techniques to make the most of their allocation, others are less judicious in their use. As a result, much of Egypt's water is external pagelost to evaporationcall_made and runoff. A key point of evaporation is Lake Nasser, formed after the completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1971. Various estimates put water loss from the reservoir at external page16 percent of Egypt's annual allocationcall_made, external page10 to 16 cubic kilometers per yearcall_made, or enough water to irrigate an external pageadditional two million kilometers of farmlandcall_made
Agricultural demand is not limited to the countries in the Nile River basin. According to a report from the Worldwatch Institute, external page16.8 million hectarescall_made in East Africa have been sold or leased to foreign companies since 2000 – and most was sold recently, after the external page2008 food crisiscall_made. external pageSome of the largest buyerscall_made in the region are corporations from Saudi Arabia, India, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates. Opponents to these large-scale acquisitions point to the toll they will take on the region's external pagewater resourcescall_made. Water-intensive crops like rice mean that locals – many of whom external pageface food security issuescall_made of their own (famine is external pageperennially a challenge in Ethiopia and Sudancall_made) – lose not only the yields from those fields, but also the water used to grow them.
Although there are mounting concerns about the external pageethics and fairnesscall_made of these deals, external pagefears of another food crisiscall_made, stoked by record drought in the United States this summer and lower yields elsewhere around the world, make it unlikely that arable land will become any less valuable on the global market. Soon, the Nile may help support much more than just the region's population.
Prospects for a Future Agreement
Despite political upheaval and the proliferation of competing interests along the basin, water is a powerful force for cooperation – there has, after all, never been a violent conflict over water on the Nile, and water as a sole source of conflict is exceedingly rare in general, according to external pageresearch by Aaron Wolfcall_made.
And there has been recent progress. Mohamed Morsi, newly-elected president of Egypt, external pagetraveled to Addis Ababacall_made on July 16 for an African Union Commission meeting where he discussed a future African common market. While Morsi external pageonly briefly mentioned the Nilecall_made, his very presence in Ethiopia was a positive sign for reconciliation between the key basin countries. The trip reverses former President Hosni Mubarak's policy of refraining from traveling to meeting with African states which he enacted following an external pageassassination attemptcall_made in 1995.
Morsi also appointed Water Minister Hisham Qandil to be the new prime minister. While there has been external pagesome concerncall_made over Qandil's relative youth and lack of political experience, he has worked on Nile issues extensively both with the NBI and the external pageAfrican Development Bankcall_made. This appointment external pagemay further signalcall_made Morsi’s dedication to finding a mutually acceptable agreement to share Nile waters.
Meles Zenawi gave an interview following the signing of the Entebbe Agreement in 2010 external pagein which he saidcall_made, "some people in Egypt have old-fashioned ideas based on the assumption that the Nile water belongs to Egypt." But, "the circumstances have changed and changed forever."
Zenawi likely did not foresee the events of the Arab Spring or the overwhelming vote for South Sudanese independence within the next year, but his words ring even truer today. Indeed, Zenawi's death in August may be a catalyst for change in the region. During the long, speculative period of his illness, an anonymous Egyptian water official said that a regime change in Ethiopia might make it easier to come to an agreement over water-sharing. "While this can in no way be official policy at this point, I believe that there would be more maneuvering with a new leadership in Ethiopia because there would be the ability to communicate and not be seen as antagonistic," external pagehe told Egyptian newspaper Bikya Masrcall_made.
The region has been irrevocably altered by political and demographic change as well as accelerating development. These changes present new challenges, but perhaps they will also breathe new life into negotiations.For additional reading on this topic please see:
Water Scarcity and Food Security along the Nile
Negotiations for a Nile-Cooperative Framework Agreement
The Nile: Is It a Curse or Blessing?