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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Sep 27 2010 - 09:27:42 EDT
Egypt and Thirsty Neighbors Are at Odds Over Nile
By THANASSIS CAMBANIS
Published: September 27, 2010
BATAMDA, Egypt - One place to begin to understand why this parched country
has nearly ruptured relations with its upstream neighbors on the Nile is
ankle-deep in mud in the cotton and maize fields of Mohammed Abdallah
Sharkawi. The price he pays for the precious resource flooding his farm?
Nothing.
"Thanks be to God," Mr. Sharkawi said of the Nile River water. He raised
his hands to the sky, then gestured toward a state functionary visiting his
farm. "Everything is from God, and from the ministry."
But perhaps not for much longer. Upstream countries, looking to right what
they say are historic wrongs, have joined in an attempt to break Egypt and
Sudan's near-monopoly on the water, threatening a crisis that Egyptian
experts said could, at its most extreme, lead to war.
"Not only is
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/eg
ypt/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Egypt the gift of the Nile, this is a country
that is almost completely dependent on Nile water resources," said a
spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Hossam Zaki. "We have a growing
population and growing needs. There is no way we can accept this kind of
threat."
Ever since civilization first sprang forth here, Egyptians have clustered
along the Nile's silt-rich banks. Almost all of the country's 80 million
people live within a few miles of the river, and farmers like Mr. Sharkawi
have hardly changed their farming methods in four millenniums. Egypt's
population is growing briskly, however, and by the year 2017 at current
rates of usage the Nile's water will barely meet Egypt's basic needs,
according to the Ministry of Irrigation.
And that is assuming that the river's flow is undiminished. Under British
colonial rule, a 1929 treaty reserved 80 percent of the Nile's entire flow
for Egypt and Sudan, then ruled as a single country. That treaty was
reaffirmed in 1959. Usually upstream countries dominate control of a river,
like the Tigris and Euphrates, which are much reduced by the time they flow
into Iraq from Turkey and Syria. The case of the Nile is reversed because
the British colonials who controlled the region wanted to guarantee water
for Egyptian agriculture.
The seven upstream countries - Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda - say the treaty is an
unfair vestige of colonialism, while Egypt says those countries are awash in
water resources, unlike arid Egypt, which depends on just one.
Today's confrontation has unfolded in slow motion. In April, negotiations
between the nine Nile countries broke down after Egypt and Sudan refused to
give ground. The upstream countries quickly got together and in May came up
with a formula that would free them to build their own irrigation projects
and dams, reducing the flow to Lake Nasser, the vast man-made reservoir that
straddles Egypt and Sudan.
So far Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda have signed the new Nile
basin accord, which would require only a simple majority of member countries
to approve new projects. Egypt wants to retain veto power over projects in
any country, and with Sudan argues that the main provisions of the
colonial-era treaty should be preserved.
Congo and Burundi have not yet taken sides. Egypt and Sudan have until May
2011 to resume negotiations, or else the upstream countries will activate
the new agreement.
The threat of losing Nile water has animated Egypt, which until recently had
virtually ignored the upstream countries. And Cairo received another jolt
this spring, when Ethiopia inaugurated a $520 million
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hydroelectri
c_power/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> hydroelectric dam on a Nile
tributary, part of a decade-long project to create a modern electricity
infrastructure. Italy, Ethiopia and the European Investment Bank financed
the project, according to Ethiopian media reports.
Adding urgency, say diplomats and water experts in Egypt, investors from
China and the Persian Gulf region have expressed interest in underwriting
enormous agriculture projects in Uganda and Ethiopia, which would use Nile
water.
Currently, several upstream nations, including Ethiopia and Uganda, are
planning hydroelectric dams. If the upstream countries move slowly and fill
the reservoirs over a period of 5 to 15 years, however, Egyptian officials
concede that the hydroelectric plants will not significantly hurt Egyptian
consumption.
Egyptian officials are also confident that the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/w/world_b
ank/index.html?inline=nyt-org> World Bank, the traditional donor for dams,
would not approve them over Cairo's objections, even if the officials remain
concerned that governments and private investors might feel free to lend the
money.
But agricultural projects, potentially far more damaging to Egypt, are
another matter. Not only would they permanently reduce the amount of water
that reaches Egypt's border, but they have also already attracted the
interest of wealthy Arab nations and the Chinese, who see an enormous profit
potential in them.
Egyptian water experts said that the upstream countries wasted colossal
amounts of water that run off unused into swamps. The upstream countries
point to Egypt's own wasteful practices, saying that 75 percent of Egypt's
water is used for agriculture, most of it wasted by inefficient,
old-fashioned practices.
"I feel that we are all mad," said Diaa el-Quosy, an American-trained water
expert who advises Egypt's irrigation minister. "Everyone wants to take his
own share and then more." He said that once political tensions cooled, the
nine Nile basin countries could find "creative solutions" to manage the
river's flow effectively. "There is water enough for everyone," he said.
In Egypt, however, decades of bellicose rhetoric about the Nile have made
the river's water an explosive issue. "Violating Egypt's quota of Nile water
is a genocidal war against 80 million people," an Egyptian commentator,
Hazem el-Beblawi, wrote this year in Al Masry Al Youm, an Egyptian daily.
Water experts say that Egypt has done little to curtail its own misuse of
water.
Despite periodic government efforts to promote less wasteful practices,
irrigation water still flows largely through dirt channels often choked with
weeds. Much of it leaches into the ground before reaching crops. "Egypt
doesn't act like a country dying of thirst," said Dan Morrison, author of
"The Black Nile," in which he chronicled his journey from the river's
origins to its mouth at the Mediterranean, and encountered the most
pronounced waste in Egypt. So long as water is free for farmers, Mr.
Morrison said, there is little incentive to conserve.
One solution Mr. Morrison proposed would entail Egypt's importing food
staples from upstream nations that can farm more efficiently with Nile
water.
Isam Abdurahman, a Ministry of Agriculture farm supervisor, said the
government was taking steps to try to conserve water, including paving some
irrigation canals and managing farmers more strictly. This year, for
instance, because of low river levels, rice cultivation was banned entirely
in some areas, while the cotton quota was severely restricted. Mr. Sharkawi
was permitted to plant only one field with cotton, rather than four.
And in a few desert areas like Toshka, near the Sudanese border, Egypt has
experimented with large-scale modern drip irrigation. The vast majority of
its farmers, however, are small land holders like Mr. Sharkawi, who
cultivates maize, cotton and alfalfa in the Nile Delta.
He cannot afford to invest in drip irrigation or sprinkler systems that
would lose less water to evaporation. Furthermore, like most Egyptian family
farmers, he favors the most water-hogging crops, like rice, maize and
cotton, rather than lower-intensity fruits and vegetables.
Upstream leaders like Ethiopia's prime minister caution that Nile water use
is "not a zero-sum game," but in Egypt's Delta that's exactly how millions
of farmers view it. If he had to pay for his water, Mr. Sharkawi said, he
simply would lose his land. "Since the time of the ancient Egyptians," he
said, "we've always lived like this. It is the same for me, and it will be
the same for my children."
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