The political and strategic benefits of the Renaissance Dam to Ethiopia
exceed its development objectives, reports Doaa El-Bey
* Friday,11 April, 2014
Building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which started three
years ago, is de facto taking place, which explains the approach of
different parties involved. The cabinet's Supreme Committee for Nile Water
is considering legal action against Ethiopia, and the Foreign Ministry has
issued a detailed outline of its stand and is highlighting the importance of
resolving that issue to all parties in every international visit. Ethiopia
continues to call for dialogue because time is in its interest. More
recently, a group of academics and experts in the field held a conference
entitled "The River Nile: Cooperation rather than Conflict", to cast light
on the problems and their possible solutions.
Egypt described the Nile water issue as an issue of national security. Last
month, the Foreign Ministry announced a detailed outline of the official
stance on GERD, stating that it is looking forward to negotiating a
"win-win" solution for all parties, through which protecting the
developmental needs of Ethiopia and the water security of Egypt and Sudan is
achieved. A few days later, the Foreign Ministry spokesman Badr Abdel-Atti
stressed that an "integrated action plan" is being implemented "gradually"
to protect Egypt's water security interests with regard to the construction
of GERD, and that Egypt's position on the dam is unchanged. He also said
that there is no room at all for concessions or allowances harming our
interests because it is a subject of national security. The ministry's plan
includes "political, legal and other technical elements", Abdel-Atti added.
In the meantime, Addis Ababa confirmed that it is ready to open talks with
Cairo on the dam project, following news that Egypt has formed a special
legal committee to look at the possibility of securing international
arbitration over the issue of the dam. Speaking at a ceremony held to mark
three years since the construction of the dam started, the Ethiopian Water
Minister Alemayehu Tegenu said early this month that his government had
"exerted utmost efforts to build trust among all riparian countries," adding
that, "Egypt has continued to engage in negative campaigning against the
dam." Tegenu criticised Cairo's attempts to politicise the issue and the
action of a panel of experts tasked with studying the dam's potential impact
on downstream states.
This week, in the course of the sixth international conference of the Arab
Health Water Association (AHWA), a panel of experts drew a detailed and
rather sombre picture of the Nile water problem and its impact on Egypt and
the region at the legal, technical, geological, environmental, political and
hydro-political levels. That was in the sixth international conference.
Mohamed Salman Tayel, a political science professor at Cairo University,
argued that the project is political rather than developmental. He pointed
to the fact that Egypt obtains 96.4 per cent of its water needs from the
Nile, compared to two per cent in the case of Ethiopia; thus Nile water is
of marginal importance to Addis Ababa. This is a conflict among Nile basin
states that started in the 1950s, he went on to explain.
However, Tayel regarded factors as the high cost of the dam, the nature of
the land on which it is being built, the relocation of people living in the
area, the short life expectancy of the dam, as clear evidence that the
purpose of the project is to put political pressure on Egypt. By so doing,
Tayel added, Addis Ababa aims to create a state of political satisfaction on
the internal level and unite the people on a common cause. On the external
level, it aims to achieve hydro-political hegemony on the Nile as the first
step on the way becoming "actor and initiator" in the region. In short, it
wants to revive Harmon's principle to "absolute territorial sovereignty".
Tayel concluded by pointing to possible solutions to the issue like
cooperation - which is not reliable at present, imposing a political and
strategic siege on Ethiopia through casting light on its policies, creating
a regional opinion that supports Egyptian rights, using concepts like
"genocide" to describe the impacts of the dam on Egypt, striking political
deals with world powers like the US, China, Russia and India, legal
escalation though referring the case to the UN and the International Court
of Justice.
For his part Abbas Al-Sharaki, a professor at the Cairo University Institute
for African Research and Studies, talking about the geological and
environmental impact of the dam, agreed with Tayel that the dam is being
built for political purposes since it cannot provide Ethiopians with
electricity or water but can nonetheless harm Egypt. He explained that the
size and storage capacity of the dam could cause mild earthquakes that can
affect its body. Thus the possibility of its collapse is very strong. He
pointed to other factors that contribute to this view, namely heavy rains,
strong flow of water and basalt-rich soil.
Meanwhile, Al-Sharaki pointed to the fact that Ethiopia has no way of
transporting what extra water the dam might provide to its people, who
depend on rain for irrigation. Though there is a major energy problem in
Ethiopia, it is not likely to improve on building the dam because most of
the electricity generated would be exported. Talk of the development
objectives of the dam are not true and the project is a political scheme
that aims to raise the popularity of the regime. Meles Zenawi, Al-Sharaki
explained, died as a popular hero because he started the dam project. The
present regime gained a lot because it insisted on finishing it.
Legal expert and renowned international negotiator Mofid Shehab emphasised
the fact that Nile water is an issue of national security, focusing on the
legal side of the problem. He said that Egypt has the legal advantage in its
negotiations with Ethiopia, namely all the agreements signed in the past
regarding sharing Nile water including the 1929 and 1959 agreements. Shehab
identified three main principles that Egypt has never changed in dealing
with the Nile water issue: cooperation, insistence on our historical rights
to the water and seeking a greater supply via negotiations with the Nile
basin countries. At present, he added, we are in a state of international
conflict with Ethiopia. But that conflict cannot be resolved except in a
peaceful framework built on cooperation.
Shehab outlined two tracks for Egypt to move on: the friendly, and the legal
track. The first track would involve negotiation, mediation, fact-finding
committees and consensual solutions. However, he elaborated, that track ends
with non-binding opinions or recommendations. The second track, Shehab
explained, cannot be adopted unless both Egypt and Ethiopia accept it, yet
its outcome is binding to all parties concerned. While he believes that the
best plan is to follow both tracks simultaneously, Shehab called on all
institutions that have experience in the field including civil society and
university professors to work together until a fair solution is reached.
Sayed Feleifel, an expert on African issues, focused on the political side
of the problem. He said that Ethiopia has been trying for a long time to
control Egypt, pointing to its alliance with Israel and South Africa to that
purpose. While nothing has changed in this alliance, Egypt has changed: it
neglected Africa and delayed implementing development projects there. Thus,
he concluded that Ethiopia's present behaviour confirms that it still has
the same will to control Egypt. The fact that an Israeli company will be
operating in Ethiopia to generate electricity provides further evidence of
this point.
Alaa Al-Zawahri, a professor of irrigation at the Faculty of Engineering,
Cairo University pointed to the intransigence of the Ethiopian stand,
reflected in the condition it imposed on the international tripartite
committee responsible for assessing the impacts of GERD. Addis Ababa, he
said, insisted that the phrase "under construction" should be included in
the committee's final report, that report should be non-binding and that the
committee should base its report on Ethiopian studies only. Meanwhile, he
added, during the work of the committee, Ethiopia presented it with simple
or incomplete studies while it was going on with the building process. Thus,
he emphasised the fact that the Egyptian position is very difficult because
the building process is underway.
The way out as Al-Zawahri sees it lies in building a smaller dam that would
help Ethiopia generate electricity and in the meantime have less of an
impact on Egypt, in addition to completing the building process of the
Jonglei Canal that is likely to reduce the amount of water loss and
consequently raise the water quota for Egypt and Sudan.
The title of the conference, as Maghawry Shehata Diab, the President of
AHWA, pointed out, deliberately stresses cooperation rather than conflict,
to highlight the importance of cooperation. Nevertheless, he added, the Nile
water problem has political and strategic dimensions. Besides, building GERD
and other Ethiopian dams on the Nile reflects a disdain for international
laws that organise the fair and legal water sharing of international rivers.