Who Owns the Nile? Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia's History-Changing Dam
16/06/2014
http://www.yerelgundem.com/haberler/653299/who_owns_the_nile_egypt_sudan_and_ethiopias_historychanging_dam.html
In the fall of 2012 newspapers around the world reported on a Wikileaks
document, surreptitiously acquired from Stratfor, the Texas security
company, revealing Egyptian and Sudanese plans to build an airstrip for
bombing a dam in the Blue Nile River Gorge in Ethiopia. The Egyptian and
Sudanese governments denied the reports.
Whether or not there were such plans in 2012, there is a long history of
threats and conflicts in the Nile River Basin. Downriver Egypt and Sudan
argue that they have historic rights to the water upon which they
absolutely depend--and in 1979 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat threatened war
on violators of what he saw as his country's rights to Nile waters. Upriver
Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania argue that they too
need the water that originates on their lands.
Since the twelfth century C.E. Christian Ethiopian kings have warned Muslim
Egyptian sultans of their power to divert waters of the Nile, often in
response to religious conflicts. But these were hypothetical threats.
Today, however, Ethiopia is building the Grand Renaissance Dam and, with
it, Ethiopia will physically control the Blue Nile Gorge--the primary source
of most of the Nile waters.
The stakes could not be higher for the new leaders in Egypt and Ethiopia,
President Mohamed Morsi and Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, as well as
Sudan's long-time President, Omar El Bashir. The stakes are perhaps even
higher for the millions of people who owe their livelihood and very
existence to the Nile's waters.
Egypt and the Nile
The Nile has been essential for civilization in Egypt and Sudan. Without
that water, there would have been no food, no people, no state, and no
monuments. As Herodutus famously wrote in the 5th century B.C.E., "Egypt is
the gift of the Nile."
For millennia peoples have travelled along the banks of the Nile and its
tributaries. Scores of ethnic groups in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan share
architecture and engineering, ideas and traditions of religion and
political organization, languages and alphabets, food and agricultural
practices.
In 3000 B.C.E., when the first Egyptian dynasty unified the lower and upper
parts of the Nile River, there were no states in Eastern or Central Africa
to challenge Egypt's access to Nile waters.
The Nile was a mysterious god: sometimes beneficent, sometimes vengeful.
Floods between June and September, the months of peak flow, could wipe out
entire villages, drowning thousands of people. Floods also brought the
brown silt that nourished the delta, one of the world's most productive
agricultural regions, feeding not only Egypt but many of its neighbors.
The river's central importance to Egyptian life is captured in A Hymn to
the Nile, recorded in PapyrusSallier II:
Hail to thee, O Nile, that issues from the earth and comes to keep Egypt
alive! ...
He that waters the meadows which He created ...
He that makes to drink the desert ...
He who makes barley and brings emmer into being ...
He who brings grass into being for the cattle ...
He who makes every beloved tree to grow ...
O, Nile, verdant art thou, who makes man and cattle to live.
The Nile's seasonal flooding is a central theme in Egyptian history. The
river flow follows regular patterns, increasing between May 17 and July 6,
peaking in September, and then receding until the next year. But the river
volume is very unpredictable, as documented by nilometers (multi-storied
structures built in the river to measure water heights). Successive empires
of Pharaohs, Greeks, Romans, Christian Copts, and Muslims celebrated the
rising waters of the Nile and dreaded floods or droughts.
Five millennia of Nile history show how years with high water have produced
ample food, population growth, and magnificent monuments, as during the
first five dynasties from 3050 B.C.E. to 2480 B.C.E. Periods with low water
have brought famine and disorder. The Book of Genesis describes seven years
of famine that historians associate with the drought of 1740 B.C.E.
>From the time of the Pharaohs until 1800 C.E., Egypt's population rose and
fell between 2 to 5 million, due to food availability and epidemics. The
irrigation projects of the 19th century Ottoman ruler Mohammad Ali allowed
year-around cultivation, causing population growth from 4 to 10 million.
Since the opening of the Aswan High Dam in 1971, Egypt's population has
increased from about 30 to 83 million.
The Sources of the Nile
Despite the extraordinary importance of the Nile to people downstream, the
origin of the great river was a mystery until the middle twentieth century.
Herodotus speculated that the Nile arose between the peaks of Crophi and
Mophi, south of the first cataract. In 140 C.E. Ptolemy suggested the
source was the Mountains of the Moon, in what are now called the Ruwenzori
Mountains in Uganda.
The 11th century Arab geographer al-Bakri postulated West African origins,
confusing the Niger River, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean, with the
Nile River. In 1770 the Scottish explorer James Bruce claimed his discovery
of the source in Ethiopia, while in 1862 John Hanning Speke thought he
found it in Lake Victoria and the equatorial lakes.
The river's limited navigability only increased its mystery. The Blue Nile
River descends 4501 feet in 560 miles from Lake Tana in the Ethiopian
highlands through a deep gorge with crocodiles, hippopotamuses, and bandits
to the Sudan border and the savannah. Despite the efforts of scores of
intrepid adventurers, the Blue Nile in Ethiopia was not successfully
navigated until 1968 by a team of British and Ethiopian soldiers and
civilians equipped by the Royal Military College of Science.
Further south up the White Nile in the lakes and rivers of Burundi, Rwanda,
Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, the Egyptian cultural influence is less
pronounced, due to the Sudd, a gigantic and impassable swamp which absorbs
waters from the equatorial lake tributaries. The Nile River historian
Robert O. Collins reports that "no one passed through this primordial bog"
until 1841.
Not until the 20th century did it become clear that the Nile is part of a
vast river system with dozens of tributaries, streams, and lakes,
stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the remote mountains of Burundi,
in tropical central Africa, and to the highlands of Ethiopia, in the Horn
of Africa.
Spanning more than 4,200 miles, it is the longest river in the world. It
has also become clear that the volume of water which flows through the Nile
is relatively small--a mere two percent in volume of the Amazon's and
fifteen percent of the Mississippi--and mostly (86%) from Ethiopia.
Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Historical Struggle for the Nile's Waters
Ethiopia and Egypt have had a long relationship of both harmony and
discord, the latter the result of religious issues and access to Nile
water, among other factors.
Ethiopia's first well documented government was in Aksum, a city-state that
controlled a large empire from the Ethiopian highlands across the Red Sea
to Yemen. From 100 until 800 C.E. Aksumites participated in Mediterranean
and Indian Ocean trade.
The cultural relationship between Egypt and Ethiopia was institutionalized
when the Aksumite King Ezana converted to Christianity in 330 C.E. For 16
centuries (until 1959) the Egyptian bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
was appointed by the Egyptian patriarch in Alexandria, often under the
influence of the Egyptian government.
Ethiopians were profoundly influenced by the Middle East, even writing
their state and geography into Bible stories. The source of the Blue Nile
became the Gihon, one of the four rivers that flowed from the Garden of
Eden. The 14th century C.E. myth of national origins connected Ethiopia's
rulers to the Old Testament. In this legend the Queen of Sheba (Mekedda),
journeyed north from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to meet King Solomon in 900
B.C.E. A romantic relationship produced a child, Menelik I, the first in
Ethiopia's Solomonic Dynasty.
When Menelik became an adult, despite his father's wish that he become the
next King of Israel, he escaped to Ethiopia with the Ark of the
Covenant--the cabinet which contained the tablets of the ten commandments
given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. Menelik stored the Ark on an island
in Lake Tana--into which the Gihon flows--before it was moved to Aksum, where
many Ethiopians believe the Ark remains to this day. Another Ethiopian
legend is that Mary and Jesus stayed a night on that same island (Tana
Cherquos) during their flight from the Holy Land to Egypt.
The Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640 C.E. put Christian Ethiopia in a
defensive position. Because the Ethiopian Orthodox Church remained
subordinate to the Orthodox Church in Alexandria, and Egypt had become a
Muslim country, Ethiopians became suspicious and resentful of the control
Egypt had on the appointment of their Christian bishop (abun). Muslim
Egyptians also controlled Jerusalem and had the power to expel Ethiopian
pilgrims to their holiest of cities.
So Ethiopians began to claim power over Egypt through control of the Nile.
During the Crusades the Ethiopian emperor Lalibela (1190-1225)--who built a
new Jerusalem in Ethiopia, safe from Muslim occupation in magnificent,
underground rock-hewn churches--threatened retribution by diverting the
Tekeze River from its pathway north into Sudan (where it becomes the Atbara
and then joins the Nile).
The first Egyptian to write about the potential for an Ethiopian diversion
of the Nile was the 13th century Coptic scholar Jurjis al-Makin (d. 1273).
Stories about Ethiopia's power over the Nile inspired the 14th century
European legend of Prester John, a wealthy Christian Ethiopian priest king.
In 1510 the legend returned to Ethiopia with Portuguese explorer Alfonso d'
Albuquerque, who considered the possibility of destroying Egypt by
diverting the Nile to the Red Sea. In 1513 d'Albuquerque even asked the
Portuguese king for workers skilled in digging tunnels. Nothing came of the
plan.
But conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia continued, often as proxy wars
between Christians and Muslims on Ethiopia's northern or southeastern
borderlands. The sixteenth century invasion of Ethiopia by Ahmad Gragn, the
Muslim imam from the Adal Sultante, was seen as an Egyptian conflict.
In the nineteenth century Egypt and Ethiopia fought over control of the Red
Sea and upper Nile Basin. The climax came in 1876 at the Battle of Gura in
present day Eritrea where the Ethiopians delivered a humiliating defeat to
the Egyptian army.
Colonial-Era Conflicts over the Nile
The European partition of Africa in the 1880s added huge complexity to this
conflict.
Egypt was colonized by England in 1882. Ethiopia defeated the Italians at
the Battle of Adwa in 1896 becoming the only African country to retain its
independence during the "scramble for Africa." But colonization created
many new states in the Nile Basin (Eritrea, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya,
and Tanganika) and set off new competition for resources and territory.
Egypt was prized for the Nile Delta, a region of unsurpassed agricultural
productivity. After the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, Egypt also
offered access to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. For the British control
of Egypt meant more profitable trade with India, its richest colony. For
the French, the canal offered quicker access to Indochina, its most
lucrative colony.
In the late nineteenth century, since controlling Egypt was the key to
Asian wealth, and since Egypt depended on the Nile, controlling the source
of the Nile became a major colonial goal.
The French-English competition for control of the Nile Basin climaxed in
1898 at Fashoda.
The French conceived of the idea of building a dam on the White Nile, so as
to undermine British influence further downriver and establish east-west
control of the continent. They organized a stupendous pincer movement with
one group of soldiers traveling from East Africa across Ethiopia and the
other from West Africa across the Congo.
The British heard of the French expedition, and, having just captured
Khartoum ordered a fleet of gun boats and steamers with soldiers under the
leadership of General Horatio Herbert Kitchener upriver to Fashoda, the
site of the proposed dam. With fewer than 200 men, the French were
embarrassed. In 1899 the two colonial powers reached an agreement which
designated to France the frontiers of the Congo River and to England the
frontiers of the White Nile.
The Fashoda Incident revealed how little Europeans understood about the
Nile River. Thinking that most of the Nile waters came from the equatorial
lakes (Victoria, Albert, Kyoga, and Edward), the English spent enormous
energy on plans to increase White Nile water flows.
First called the Garstin Cut and later the Jonglei Canal, the British
intended to create a channel that would maximize water transfer through the
great swamp (where half of it evaporated).
One of the most expensive engineering projects in Africa, it was terminated
in 1984 by the Sudan People's Liberation Army, because of the severe
disruption it brought to the lives of the indigenous upper Nile peoples. If
the 300 mile-long Jonglei Canal had been completed, it would have increased
water flows by nearly 4 billion cubic meters into the White Nile.
Negotiating the Nile: Treaties and Agreements over the Nile Waters
Treaty negotiations about Nile waters started during the colonial era as
England tried to maximize agricultural productivity in the delta.
In 1902 the British secured from the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II an
agreement to consult with them on any Blue Nile water projects, especially
on Lake Tana. As the controlling imperial power in East Africa, agreements
with Kenya, Tanganika, Sudan, and Uganda were pro forma, internal colonial
matters.
After achieving its independence in 1922, Egypt negotiated the Nile Waters
Agreement of 1929 with the East African British colonies. This accord
established Egypt's right to 48 billion cubic meters of water flow, all dry
season waters, and veto-power over any upriver water management projects;
newly independent Sudan (1956) was accorded rights to 4 billion cubic
meters of water. The Ethiopian monarch was not consulted--at least in part
because no one understood how much Nile water actually came from Ethiopia.
The 1959 Nile Waters Agreement between Egypt and Sudan was completed before
all the upriver states achieved independence: Tanganika (1961), Uganda
(1962), Rwanda (1962), Burundi (1962), and Kenya (1963).
The signatories of the 1959 Agreement allocated Egypt 55.5 billion cubic
meters of water annually while Sudan was allowed 18.5 billion cubic meters.
These 79 billion cubic meters represented 99% of the calculated average
annual river flow.
The treaty also allowed for the construction of the Aswan High Dam
(completed in 1971), the Roseires Dam (completed 1966 on the Blue Nile in
Sudan), and the Khashm al-Girba Dam (completed in 1964 on the Atbara River
in Sudan).
The treaty so negatively affected the upriver states that it provided the
inspiration for the Nyerere Doctrine, named after independent Tanzania's
first president, which asserted that former colonies had no obligation to
abide by treaties signed for them by Great Britain.
Emperor Haile Selassie was offended by President Nasser's exclusion of
Ethiopia in the Nile Waters Agreement and in planning for building the
Aswan Dam. He negotiated the 1959 divorce of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
from the Orthodox Church in Alexandria, ending 1600 years of institutional
marriage.
He also began planning for several dams on the Blue Nile and its
tributaries, contributing $10 million dollars from the Ethiopian treasury
towards a study by the U.S. Department of Reclamation resulting in a
seventeen volume report completed in 1964 and titled Land and Water
Resources of the Blue Nile Basin: Ethiopia.
Nasser responded by encouraging Muslims in Eritrea (reunified with Ethiopia
after World War II) to secede from Ethiopia. He also encouraged Muslim
Somalis to fight for the liberation of Ethiopia's Ogaden region.
Ethiopia won the war with Somalia in 1977-78 and retained the Ogaden. Its
30 year war with Eritrea, an Egyptian ally, came at a tremendous cost.
Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974, and after 1993 Eritrea won
independence and Ethiopia became a landlocked country--although it still
possessed the headwaters of the Blue Nile.
In the middle of the 1980s, rains failed in the Ethiopian highlands,
causing a serious water crisis upriver and downriver. One million
Ethiopians died as a result of drought and famine--made worse by Civil War
with Eritrea. Egypt averted disaster but Aswan's turbines were nearly shut
down, creating an electric power nightmare; and crops failed in the delta,
bringing the real prospect of famine.
As a result, Egyptians came to understand that their great Aswan Dam had
not solved their historic dependency on upriver Nile water. In 1987, after
years of hostile rhetoric, the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the
Ethiopian President Haile Mariam Mengistu replaced the language of threat
and confrontation with words of conciliation and cooperation.
Then in the 1990s the Ethiopian rains returned and, remarkably, Hosni
Mubarak redoubled efforts begun during the Sadat administration to build
the Toshka Canal, one of the world's most expensive and ambitious
irrigation projects. This plan would take 10% of waters in Lake Nasser to
irrigate Egypt's sandy Western Desert, increasing Egypt's need for Nile
water even if they maintained their 1959 treaty share of 55 billion cubic
meters.
In anger and disbelief, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi
protested: "While Egypt is taking the Nile water to transform the Sahara
Desert into something green, we in Ethiopia--who are the source of 85% of
that water--are denied the possibility of using it to feed ourselves."
He then began plans for the Grand Renaissance Dam.
International water law has not resolved differences about ownership of
Nile Waters. The Helsinki Agreement of 1966 proposed the idea of "equitable
shares"--and the idea was taken up again in the 1997 United Nations
Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International
Watercourses.
A proposal for "equitable shares" was again put forward in the 1999 Nile
Basin Initiative, which included all the affected countries. Unfortunately
the initiative did not resolve the conflict between Egypt and Sudan's
claims of historic rights and the upper river states' claims for equitable
shares.
In 2010, six upstream countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi,
and Tanzania) signed a Cooperative Framework Agreement seeking more water
shares. Egypt and Sudan rejected the agreement because it challenged their
historic water rights.
Ethiopia and the Lessons of Dam Building
One lesson from the last century of mega-dam building is that upriver
countries have the most power when negotiating water rights. The first of
the mega-dams, the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in the United States,
cost Mexico water. The Ataturk Dam in Turkey has had a devastating impact
on downriver Syria and Iraq. China and Tibet control waters on multiple
rivers flowing downstream to India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and
Vietnam.
Another lesson is that mega-dams have enormous and unanticipated
environmental impacts. The Aswan High Dam has disrupted the ecosystems of
the river, the delta, and the Mediterranean with results of reduced
agricultural productivity and fish stocks. It also caused a series of
seismic events due to the extreme weight of the water in Lake Nasser, one
of the world's largest reservoirs.
Although late to mega-dam building, Ethiopia is now making up for lost
time. One of the tallest dams in the world was completed in 2009 on the
Tekeze River in northern Ethiopia. Three major dams on the Omo and Gibe
Rivers in southern Ethiopia are either completed or nearly so.
The biggest of Ethiopia's water projects, the Grand Renaissance Dam, will
have a reservoir holding 67 billion cubic meters of water--twice the water
held in Lake Tana, Ethiopia's largest lake--and is expected to generate 6000
megawatts of electricity.
Ethiopians hope these water projects--which extend to 2035 with other Nile
tributaries and river systems--will lift their country out of poverty.
Similar large dams have produced economic miracles in the United States,
Canada, China, Turkey, India, Brazil, and, of course, Egypt.
Ethiopia's options for economic development are limited. With nearly 90
million people it is the most populous landlocked country in the world. It
is also one of the world's poorest countries--174 on the list of 187
countries in the United Nations Human Development Index for 2012. (Sudan is
169 and Egypt 113.) This index rates countries based on life expectancy,
education, and income, among other criteria.
Part of Ethiopia's challenge is that 85 percent of the workforce is in
agricultural commodities that bring low profits. Ethiopia is already
leasing land in its southern regions to Saudi Arabia, India, and China for
large irrigated water projects--despite severe land shortage in its northern
regions--because it does not have the funds to develop this land on its own.
If Ethiopia cannot use its elevation and seasonal rains for hydro-electric
power and irrigation, what is it to do?
The Grand Renaissance Dam
The state-owned Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation optimistically reports
that the Grand Renaissance Dam will be completed in 2015 at a cost of
nearly 5 billion dollars. As of 2013, the project is 13% complete,
suggesting that it may be many years and billions of dollars before the dam
is finished. The Tekeze dam was well over its predicted budget and years
behind schedule.
The major obstacle to completion is financing.
The World Bank, the European Investment Bank, the Chinese Import-Export
Bank, and the African Development Bank provided financing for some of the
other dams; but concerns about the environmental and political impact of
this latest dam have discouraged lenders.
The International Monetary Fund suggested that Ethiopia put the dam on a
slow track, arguing that the project will absorb 10% of Ethiopia's Gross
Domestic Product, thus displacing other necessary infrastructure
development.
Nevertheless the Ethiopian government insists that it will stick with its
schedule and finance the project domestically. It probably will secure more
help from China, a loyal ally and the world's major developer of
hydroelectric power.
The Ethiopians argue that the Grand Renaissance Dam could be good for
everyone. They contend that storing water in the deep Blue Nile Gorge would
reduce evaporation, increasing water flows downstream.
The Ethiopians also argue that the new dam will be a source of
hydroelectric power for the entire region and will manage flood control at
a critical juncture where the Nile Gorge descends from the Ethiopian
highlands to the Sahel, thus reducing risk of flooding and siltation,
extending the life of the dams below stream.
Egypt and Sudan are understandably concerned about Ethiopia's power over
Nile waters. What happens while the reservoir behind the Grand Renaissance
Dam is filling up, when water flow may be reduced 25 % for three years or
more? After the reservoir is filled what will happen when rains fail in the
Ethiopian highlands? Who will get the water first?
If the question of Nile waters was sensitive in the centuries before 1900,
when Ethiopia and Egypt each had populations of 10 million or less, what
will happen over the next twenty years, as their populations each surpass
100 million and the collective population of the Nile River Basin countries
reaches 600 million?
The Grand Renaissance Dam poses a question as basic as water itself: Who
owns the Nile? When the Grand Renaissance Dam closes its gates on the Blue
Nile River, whether it is in 2015 or 2025, the time for a final reckoning
will have arrived.
Ethiopia will then have the power to claim its water shares, with the
backing of all the upriver states. Egypt and Sudan's claims to historic
water rights will have become merely hypothetical. In the context of a
difficult history, violence is a possibility, but good solutions for all
can be achieved through diplomacy and leadership
Received on Mon Jun 16 2014 - 21:58:53 EDT