Von Lossow, T. & Roll, S. (2015). The IPoE report recommended two studies to assess the environmental and socio-economic impacts of GERD and was interpreted by both the Egyptian and the Ethiopian government as a vindication of their respective positions. It can help the riparian states outline principles, rights, and obligations for cooperative management of the resources of the Nile. Mainly, for the downstream countries, the. It's free to sign up and bid on jobs. Ethiopia is pinning its hopes of economic development and power generation on the dam. It and several other large dams in Ethiopia could turn the country into Africa's hydropower hub. What are the disadvantages of the Aswan Dam? Political instability in Egypt played an important role as the announcement of the project coincided with the resignation of President Mubarak during the Arab Spring. Location l Formerly called as project x then known as the Millennium Dam then it renamed to Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The writer is a professor of political science at the UAEs Zayed and Cairo universities, *A version of this article appears in print in the 9 July, 2020 edition ofAl-Ahram Weekly, Spain La Liga results & fixtures (24th matchday). It signifies that Egypts de facto veto power on major upstream dams has been broken, and it clearly demonstrates the political will of Ethiopia to develop its water infrastructure even in the absence of a comprehensive basin agreement. Learn. Given agricultures importance to pro-poor economic growth, Egypt, which has significant experience and expertise in irrigation agriculture, can share some of that expertise with other countries in exchange for increased trade with them. Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam. . The Chinese-financed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), despite a recent breakdown in talks on Africa's largest development project, risks powering up a range of downstream tensions and rivalries. It is clearly a philosophy that looks beyond the electricity and freshwater needs of local communities to a geo-strategic restructuring of the Horn of Africa. For more on the background and history of these important relationships, see my book with former AGI Director Mwangi S. Kimenyi, Governing the Nile River Basin: The Search for a New Legal Regime., not be filled without a legally binding agreement, when the flow of Nile water to the dam falls below 35-40 b.c.m. (2012). Article IV of the DoP provides that the parties shall utilize their shared water resources in their respective territories in an equitable and reasonable manner and Article III provides that the parties shall take all appropriate measures to prevent the causing of significant harm in utilizing the Blue/Main Nile. Ethiopia can make a strong case that the operation of the Dam complies with each principle. Attia, H. & Saleh, M. (2021). An optimistic trend among todays African commentators focuses primarily on economic growth rates and pays little attention to human tolls, questions of transparency and accountability, and the sustainability of growth. At this point, though, the GERD is nearly completed, and so Egypt has shifted its position to trying to secure a political agreement over the timetable for filling the GERDs reservoir and how the GERD will be managed, particularly during droughts. In terms of putative new law, namely the Watercourses Convention and the DoP, the key principles of equitable utilisation and no significant harm seem to leave ample room to accommodate the construction of a dam for hydroelectric generation purposes. International rights organisations have reported that many cases of displacement were not voluntary and that entire communities were driven from their villages. On Feb. 26, Ethiopia temporarily suspended its . The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is estimated to cost close to 5 billion US dollars, about 7% of the 2016 Ethiopian gross national product. In turn, Egypt water policy and management should be changes or modified to overcome the great challenges. The final touches to these plans were added in 2005 and 2007, and one involves nine hydroelectric dams along the Gebale Dawa to produce some 1,300 MW of electricity for export. Afraid that a drought might appear during the filling period, Egypt wants the filling to take place over a much longer period. According to present plans, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) now under construction across the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia will be the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa, and one of the 12 largest in the world. Egypt wants control and guarantees for its share of Nile waters. For nearly a century, as a legacy of colonialism, Egypt enjoyed what Tekuya referred to as a hydro-hegemony over the Nile; despite Ethiopia contributing 86% to its waters. Hence, the customary law argument might be too ambitious. Crucially, however, despite being signed by Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, the legal status of the DoP was left (deliberately) vague. grand ethiopian renaissance dam. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will have negative impacts not only on Egypt but also on poor communities in Ethiopia as well as on its Nile Basin neighbours Ethiopia's strategy for dam construction goes far beyond developmental goals. Still, Egypt may be playing with fire if it were to press the legal significance of the DoP. In: Yihdego, Z. et al. For Ethiopia, GERD is considered an economic game-changer. However, the DoP lacks these key traits, and these omissions suggest that it may simply be a non-binding declaration designed to ease political tensions and to illuminate a way forward. Match. to hydrate farmland), it would effectively be taken from downstream states like Egypt. The Watercourses Convention aims to regulate the uses, as well as the conservation, of all transboundary waters above and below the surface. The Dam is used to generate electricity and went into partial operation in 2022. Ethiopia has the basins most suitable locations for hydropower production, and its damming of the Blue Nile would significantly increase Sudan's potential for irrigated agriculture. This is an intergovernmental partnership to provide a forum for consultation and coordination for the sustainable management and development of shared water. The filling time is estimated to take about 10 years, during which the Blue Nile water flows would be reduced. Recently, however, Sudan has been more cautious with the project, citing concerns that the GERDs operation and safety could jeopardise its own dams (The New Arab, 2020b). Ethiopian opinion is divided over the need for such huge investments in hydroelectric energy when the national network is still very underdeveloped and unable to cope. The Nile-COM is the highest political and decisionmaking body of the NBI. Practically from the outset, the World Bank and international donors withdrew funding due to a lack of transparency, driven home when it was learned that the construction had begun without a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency in Ethiopia. Trilateral talks between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to finalise an agreement on a cooperation framework for the GERD have been mediated by the African Union, World Bank and United States. Indeed, the ICJ confirmed in Gabikovo-Nagymaros Project that all riparian states have a basic right to an equitable and reasonable sharing of the resources of the watercourse. Moreover, these principles were pulled through into the DoP agreed by both Egypt and Ethiopia. Egypt, Ethiopia to form joint committee on Renaissance Dam. The establishment of the Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, up 145 and a storage capacity of 74 . The treaties also purported to give Egypt veto power over upstream projects. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is a 6,450 MW hydropower project nearing completion on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, located about 30 km upstream of the border with Sudan. Still, if the exception was somehow activated, it would mean that Egypt remains entitled to 66% of the Nile River waters and that this figure should be used as the baseline for any future negotiations. The late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who laid the foundation stone in 2011, said the dam would be built without begging for money . However, by far the largest of these projects is the GERD, which was announced in 2010 and work on which was launched in 2011 by means of a nationwide fundraiser in which Ethiopian civil servants were reportedly obliged to volunteer a months salary to invest in GERD bonds. Revisiting hydro-hegemony from a benefitsharing perspective: the case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Cairo . (2014). His successor, Mohamed Morsi, said that Egypt was prepared to defend each drop of Nile water with blood. An armed conflict has not emerged, but there are suggestions that Egyptian intelligence services undermined Ethiopia internally by assisting the Oromo Liberation Front in its campaign of civil unrest in Ethiopia in 2016. Workers move iron girders from a crane at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), near Guba, Ethiopia, on Dec. 26, 2019. Swain, A. It states in Principle III that the parties shall take all appropriate measures to prevent the causing of significant harm. The three fillings hitherto, with the most recent in August 2022, imposed no discernible harm on downstream states. Subsequent impact studies were performed by the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank, and in the light of the results, these banks cancelled their funding for Gibe III. The disadvantages for Egypt and Sudan are the possibility of reduced river flow, although this is only really a problem during the years of filling the dam. In March 2015, a 'Declaration of Principles' was signed by the leaders of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, setting the foundations for an initial cooperation. Match facts: Egypts Ahly v South Africas Mamelodi Sundowns (CAF Champions.. 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Officials in Addis Ababa argue that the GERD will have no major impact on water flow into the Nile, instead arguing that the hydropower dam will provide benefits to countries in the region, including as a source of affordable electric power and as a major mechanism for the management of the Nile, including the mitigation of droughts and water salinity. It is therefore intrinsically connected with the question of land ownership. While the water will return to its normal state before reaching Egypt, the damage to these populations will be permanent. We shall begin with the former. Therefore, a negotiated position that favours Ethiopia is likely to be reached once it becomes politically palatable enough inside Egypt. Alaa al-Zawahiri, a member of the Egyptian National Panel of Experts studying the effects of the Renaissance Dam, believes as much. July 26, 2022. In an effort to forestall potential water conflicts such as the one brewing around the Dam, an increasing number of bilateral and multilateral water agreements have been concluded in recent decades. In the absence of the application of the Watercourses Convention, various other legal arrangements and political declarations must be considered to gain an understanding of the regulation of the Dam and the Nile River more generally. There has long been a conflict over water rights among the riparian countries of the Eastern Nile Basin (Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia). Omar, A. You must have JavaScript enabled to use this form. It will also give Ethiopia more control . Sudans agricultural and hydropower interests align with those of Ethiopia while it has a strong interest in not alienating its 'big brother' and northern neighbour, Egypt, with whom it shares a long and partly contested border (Whittington et al., 2014). On Foes and Flows: Vulnerabilities, Adaptive Capacities and Transboundary Relations in the Nile River Basin in Times of Climate Change. Another impressive snippet of information is that the Government of Ethiopia is financing the entire project, along with loans mainly from China. It also created a counter message to Egypts powerful the Nile is Egypt narrative that is familiar around the world. Nevertheless, it is important to take stock of the human costs, social problems, and lasting environmental impacts of this strategy which have already drawn considerable criticism and concern. In recognition of the fact that the Nile Waters Treaties had become an uncomfortable and anachronistic vestige of colonialism, ten watercourse states along the Nile (including Egypt and Ethiopia) agreed in 1999 to form the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). From this round of talks, it appears that negotiations are able to move forward and address other sticking points on the agenda, such as conflict resolution mechanisms and the dams operations in the event of multi-year droughts (Al Jazeera, 2020). Such a meaningful resource-sharing agreement should not only resolve the conflict over water-use rights among the riparian states, but it should help define concepts such as equitable and reasonable use and significant harm, which have been used by the downstream states in their criticisms of the GERD. Because Ethiopia has been so cavalier with regard to the technical aspects of its dams, portions of them have also caved in soon after they began operation. Thus, it is only through cooperation that Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, and the other riparians can peacefully resolve conflicts over the Nile and achieve the type of water use that will contribute significantly to regional economic and human development. The dam will flood 1,680 square kilometers of forest in northwest Ethiopia (an area about four times the size of Cairo), displace approximately 20,000 people in Ethiopia, and create a reservoir that will hold around 70 billion cubic . Owned and operated by the Ethiopian Electric Power company, the 145-m-tall roller-compacted concrete gravity dam . First, as noted above, Ethiopia contributes 86% of the water in the Nile and so it seems only natural that it has an equitable claim to using Nile waters to aid growth in its impoverished economy. The withdrawal from the project by Deltares has been met by a wave of objections in Egypt for fear . Ethiopia has never 'consumed' significant shares of the Niles water so far, as its previous political and economic fragility in combination with a lack of external financial support, due to persistent Egyptian opposition to projects upstream, prevented it from implementing large-scale projects. The crucial leverage regarding Egypts water security lies with the Blue Nile countries Ethiopia and Sudan, as the Blue Nile is the main contributor to the Nile Rivers flow downstream. Water scarcity is a growing problem. The principles of cooperation have not been translated into specific technical agreements on dam management (and more), in the context of difficult domestic politics for both sides. Even then, the initial studies did not extend beyond the borders with Kenya. On March 4, 1982, Bertha Wilson became the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. Ethiopia has two major plans for these rivers, which both flow into Somalia, in the form of the Wabe Shebelle and the Genale Dawa power plants. Ethiopia has never 'consumed' significant shares of the Nile's water so far, as its previous political and economic fragility in combination with a lack of external financial support, due to persistent Egyptian opposition to projects upstream, prevented it from implementing large-scale projects. (2020). Cairo Controversy prevailed in the Egyptian public opinion, after Deltares, a Dutch advisory institute, announced on Sept. 15 its withdrawal from a study to assess the risks that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is under construction on the Blue Nile, can cause to Egypt and Sudan. We do know that Ethiopia is already seeing longer droughts and worse floods. The researchers looked at the dynamic interactions between the Nile's hydrology and infrastructure and Egypt's economy. when did construction of the dam begin? the study highlights the importance of weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of counter-hegemonic tactics in general, and of large dam projects in particular, and . For example, in 2017, the UNSC highlighted the security risks of water stress in the Lake Chad Basin Region, affecting Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, based on a combination of water scarcity, drought, desertification and land degradation. For a decade, Egypt and Ethiopia have been at a diplomatic stalemate over the Nile's management. The dispute over the GERD is part of a long-standing feud between Egypt and Sudanthe downstream stateson the one hand, and Ethiopia and the upstream riparians on the other over access to the Niles waters, which are considered a lifeline for millions of people living in Egypt and Sudan. In fact, the Dam arguably smooths out the flow and mitigates the risk of both drought and floods. 2011. how much does the reservoir contain? The piece (i) gives a brief history of the Dam; (ii) outlines the role of the Watercourses Convention; (iii) explains the significance of the Nile Waters Treaties; (iv) sets out the main legal arguments for Egypt and (v) provides the main legal arguments for Ethiopia.
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