Hydropolitics Of The Nile Valley

Examines the management of scarce transnational resources by Egypt & Sudan that insist upon their sovereign right to dispose of these resources as they see fit. The focus of the book is on the utilization of the Nile River. How do hydropolitics & policy interact & with what results for the use of the resource? As a case study in resource management & policy elaboration, this book helps us to understand the factors involved when two sovereign states try to cope with the challenge of binational coordination in the use of a common resource.

The Nile River Basin supports the livelihoods of millions of people in Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda, principally as water for agriculture and hydropower. The resource is the focus of much contested development, not only between upstream and downstream neighbours, but also from countries outside the region. This book investigates the water, land and energy nexus in the Nile Basin. It explains how the current surge in land and energy investments, both by foreign actors as well as domestic investors, affects already strained transboundary relations in the region and how investments are intertwined within wider contexts of Nile Basin history, politics and economy. Overall, the book presents a range of perspectives, drawing on political science, international relations theory, sociology, history and political ecology.

This is a study of the evolution of proposals to develop the Nile Basin to ensure the best use of its precious waters. The hydropolitics of the Nile valley are the most important issue today for the future of the inhabitants of Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia and East Africa.

This is a history of the hydropolitics of the Nile Valley from 1900 to 1988. Attempts to develop the Nile and control its waters are of vital significance to the future of the inhabitants of Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia, and East Africa. Acute drought and heavy flooding in the Nile Basin have brought disaster in the past, and the history of the area is the story of human effort to control the precious waters of the river. Written by a distinguished authority in the field, this highly interdisciplinary study will appeal to those interested in the environment, politics, third world development, anthropology, zoology, and economic history.

The Nile today plays a crucial role in the economics, politics and cultural life of ten countries and their more than 300 million inhabitants. No other international river basin has a longer, more complex and eventful history than the Nile. In telling the detailed story of the hydropolitics of the Nile valley in a period during which the conceptualisation, use and planning of the waters were revolutionised, and many of the most famous politicians of the twentieth century – Churchill, Mussolini, Eisenhower, Eden, Nasser and Haile Selassie – played active parts in the Nile game, this work will stand as a case study of a much more general and acute question: the political ecology of trans-national river basins.

The supply and management of fresh water for the world’s billions of inhabitants is likely to be one of the most daunting challenges of the coming century. For countries that share river basins with others, questions of how best to use and protect precious water resources always become entangled in complex political, legal, environmental, and economic considerations. This book focuses on the issues that face all international river basins by examining in detail the Nile Basin and the ten countries that lay claim to its waters. John Waterbury applies collective action theory and international relations theory to the challenges of the ten Nile nations. Confronting issues ranging from food security and famine prevention to political stability, these countries have yet to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of how to manage the Nile’s resources. Waterbury proposes a series of steps leading to the formulation of environmentally sound policies and regulations by individual states, the establishment of accords among groups of states, and the critical participation of third-party sources of funding like the World Bank. He concludes that if there is to be a solution to the dilemmas of the Nile Basin countries, it must be based upon contractual understandings, brokered by third-party funders, and based on the national interests of each basin state. “This excellent book makes a significant contribution to the rational discussion of Nile conflicts and should be helpful to many of the other 282 international river basins facing similar problems.”—Peter P. Rogers, Harvard University