The imagined scarcity has its roots in Egypt’s obstinacy to see the Nile as the sole property of Egypt. It completely disregards the rights of the riparian countries. Egypt completely negates the rights of the other riparian countries’ prosperity from the Nile water and all excuses that it will not get enough water if anything is done is baseless. Egypt’s concern is the prosperity of the other countries and that is what Egypt can’t accept and live with. That water shortage is not the real issue can be demonstrated in the following:
Lake Nasser’s evaporation loss
Lake Nasser impounded by the Aswan High Dam covers an area of about 6,500 sq.km. According to Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, the annual mean evaporation rate of the Lake is 7.54 mm/day. This is over 16 Billion Cubic Meters (BCM) annual loss.
Before complaining about water shortage Egypt must consider means of reducing this huge loss. Why should other countries suffer when Egypt has the luxury of wasting close to a quarter of the storage of the lake behind the GERD just in evaporation every year? The water that is lost in evaporation, can irrigate over 3 Million hectares of land and generate thousands of megawatt power.
The Nile Flood
Occasionally when there are heavy rains in the Ethiopian plateau Egypt has been hit by flooding that has destroyed property and lives. This could have been prevented if there was adequate storage in the upstream countries, especially in Ethiopia which contributes the bulk of the Nile flow. As a result, a valuable resource is lost, which could have otherwise been used to generate electricity and could have irrigated hundreds of thousands of hectares.
Egyptian researchers also acknowledge that adequate storage capacity should be created in order to store the water during heavy rainfall years to protect the downstream areas from flooding and to enable regulated flow throughout the year.
The study of Prof. Elfatih Eltahir and postdoc Mohamed Siam, published in the journal Nature Climate Change is quoted in FloodList News in Africa of 25 April 2017 article under the title “Climate Change Predicted to Increase Flow Variability”, clearly supports the need for more storage to balance shortages during drought and flood protection during years of heavy rain.
Egypt is in denial of all the facts that support and justify that dams are necessity for the survival and development of the Nile basin and the GERD is just one of them. To meet the current and future needs of the growing population of the region water storage anywhere in the region is not a luxury for any country.
Sooner or later water in each of the countries has got to be stored and be used in a planned manner for the benefit of all and the current status quo will not be manageable in the long run. Egypt should know this better and it is incomprehensible why it continues to insist on a strategy that will not guarantee its future needs.
Egypt must learn to collaborate with the other riparian countries for its own sake. Egypt must start considering to coexist with these countries to ensure water security and far share for the long term. Egypt even to this day doesn’t seem to recognise these countries as serious stakeholders and as forces to reckon with, but it will soon be forced to do that, because they all have needs and a growing and demanding population. They will start using the water on the tributaries sooner or later.
The status quo is no more workable. Egypt must respect the rights of the other riparian countries and must stop rushing to the doors of other countries and institutions, outside of the region to try to prevent them from exercising their rights.
Egypt must meaningfully start to cooperate because through cooperation solutions can be found to better meet the requirements of all the riparian countries and Egypt must be part of that solution. Hence, Egypt’s best bet is recognition of the rights of the riparian countries in the first place and then cooperation. All other efforts will bear no fruit.
Ethiopia is the source of over 80% of the Nile water and is also well placed to store the Nile water for regulated use and Egypt must be wise to recognise and appreciate this and shift its strategy. Egypt must accept that no outside force would compel Ethiopia to forego its natural rights so that Egypt may squander the resources freely and to no ones benefit.
For Ethiopia building dams is not a luxury, it will be putting hundreds of thousands of hectares of cultivable land under water and displace hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants. When doing so, Egypt and Sudan will immensely benefit. They will be less impacted from sediment deposition and flooding and would receive regulated flow throughout the year and effects of drought will be minimised.
The dams that Ethiopia will be building will be at higher altitudes than the GERD and evaporation rates at the impediments the dams will create will only be a fraction of that of Lake Nasser. The areas that will be taken up for storage will have higher density of inhabitants than at the GERD and resettling these people will come at a very high cost. However, Ethiopia will undertake these projects because it is seeing a future of prosperity for itself and the region at large. Ideally, the beneficiary countries should appreciate this vision and cooperate and even share the costs.
When the realities are as explained, why is Egypt so persistent and uncooperative?
First is the greed that has engulfed the psyche of Egypt. Egyptian greed must be contained. Greed is an insatiable feeling that no amount of abundance can satisfy. Egypt fails to see abundance and sees only scarcity. Greed is satisfied by denying needs of others during scarcity and sees scarcity as an opportunity for itself at the detriment of the poor or disadvantaged.
The greedy must always benefit be it during abundance or during scarcity. Egypt must get over this feeling of greed and accept the fact that the future can only be guaranteed through creating abundance for all. This works for a country, for a region and the world at large. The world is suffering because the few are so greedy, and the abundance of the world is not enough for them.
The second issue is imagined fear of the future. Fear that the downstream countries would prosper, and it can’t predict what would come as a result of their prosperity. It fails to see that it would be a beneficiary of this prosperity through integration of their economies.
To combat both greed and fear of the future, Egypt must change its outlook and work on a meaningful, future-oriented regional cooperation platform. This comes with respect and acceptance of the riparian countries as equal partners and promoting common agendas and burying the past for good. Building and developing trust should come as the first step in this endeavour.
Trust is the corner stone of healthy relationship be it on family, country, region or the world scale. When trust is developed, peace reigns and cooperation for the good of all gets affirmation. With trust the abundance is visible to all and collaboration takes the centre stage and optimism fills the air.
Legal instruments binding the relationships need to be put in place so that no party would attempt to take advantage of the healthy climate and opportunities trust brings along. Egypt must learn to trust and work on mechanism that will ensure that its trust will not be taken advantage of in order to overcome its fears.
All this will bear results if there is sincerity of leaders and the citizens are well informed on the issues. The people of the Nile basin can only be served best if their leaders are sincere and keep them well informed. Leaders looking for shortcuts and lacking in vision would only delay future catastrophes and they should not be allowed free reign.
With leaders bold enough to overcome greed and fear of the future, and willing to promote trust and sincerity and respect each other’s rights, the basin could be transformed for the good of all in a reasonably short time.
** Lemma Teklehaimanot is a civil engineer majoring in hydraulics, with many years of experience in irrigation and water supply projects study, design and construction as government employee and with consultants and contractors and currently in construction materials supply business. He can be reached at lemma.t@gmail.com
