Water Scarcity And Regional Security In The Nile Basin

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Region: Near East, Near Orient, grade: 14,5 p., University of Marburg, language: English, abstract: Since South Sudan's secession in 2011 the Nile River is shared by eleven countries (Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, D.R. Congo, and Kenya) and is home to more than 160 million people. Five of these countries are among the poorest in the world, with low levels of socio-economic development or - in other words - with tremendously high potentials and motivation to socio-economically develop. Today, exploitation of the Nile has reached its limits with ever greater populations and industries depending on its waters. History has created political power structures which represent the exact opposite of the hydrological realites. Although the river receives no contributions from Egyptian territories, the country is the most excessive consumer of Nile waters and dependent on it for about 95% of its freshwater resources. At the same time, precipitation in the Ethiopian highlands delivers some 85% of the Nile's flow measured at Aswan. But the prevailing river regime in combination with a history of political instability has so far prevented Ethiopia and other upstream countries from constructing major schemes to facilitate economic development or even flood protection for its population. Will increasing resource competition lead the states of the Nile Basin to full-scale inter-riparian conflict? Egypt with its very limited availabilty of arable land and already over-exploited and contested water resources must consider to at least partially abandon its pursuit of food self-sufficiency and examine alternative ways of securing its population's needs. Given growing pressures on the Nile's resources, the Basin states' current order will have to fundamentally shift from the current lower-basin domination to a more integrative regional system that appreciates both the upperriparians' contributions and development needs as well as the lower-riparians' dependence upon their cooperation. Considering the most recent trends in scientific literature on transboundary water resources, this transformation is expected to be accomplished through cooperative action rather than resisted against through inter-riparian conflict. This paper argues that Egypt will, despite the repeated threats uttered against underdeveloped upstream states' claims for more equal shares, lose its hitherto dominant position and engage in cooperative efforts exceeding current frameworks like that of the World Bank's NBI.

On the back-cover: In 2050, the population in all the Nile Basin countries is expected to be ten times higher than it was in 1950. This will put ever increasing pressure on water as a resource for development. The Nile Basin catchment area is shared by 11 countries covering about one-tenth of the African continent. Globally, around 70 per cent of fresh water consumption is used in agriculture. This puts the spotlight on future scenarios regarding food production : will there be enough water for food security in the Nile Basin countries? In this Current African Issues publication, water scarcity and food security are analysed from a range of perspectives. What are the future predictions regarding population increase and climate change, and how will these affect development in Nile Basin countries? What are the current water theories addressing the above issues, and what are the main challenges the Nile Basin countries will face in a context that is also strongly shaped by its history?

Water scarcity due to climate change, population growth, and economic development is a critical issue in many semi-arid and arid regions around the world. Water scarcity is especially critical in regions where water is shared by several riparian states and used for competing purposes (irrigation, domestic, industry, environment, and hydropower). There is evidence that water scarcity may give rise to conflicts among the riparian states that share water basins. At the same time, there is evidence that proper arrangements among riparian states create a basis for cooperation, which is a necessary condition for economic development, food production, environmental sustainability, and poverty reduction. This book presents a collection of work presented by a group of academics and policy experts dealing with the impact of water scarcity and variability on the ability to jointly manage shared water and the derived welfare of international states and nations sharing international river basins, consisting of economics, technology, law and institutions, geography, and international relations. The book covers theoretical aspects of management of transboundary water as well as case studies from hotspots around the world. The unique aspect of this book is the multidisciplinary nature of the chapters, reflecting a new field of research that will gain popularity as water scarcity will increase over time and across regions. The chapters from the book were presented at the "Management of Transboundary Water Resources under Scarcity: Perspectives on Agriculture and Food Security" workshop held at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, from June 22 to 23, 2015.

This book covers the entire Nile Basin and reflects the latest findings. It provides unique and cutting-edge insights into the region’s agriculture, water resources, governance, poverty, productivity, upstream-downstream linkages, innovations, future plans and their implications. Many international summits and conferences have declared that there is an urgent need to save agriculture from its demise. Most international agencies now recognize that something must be done, but what? Beyond policy changes, the restructuring of global governance and institutional reforms are called for. Commitments must be translated into concrete actions leading to a renewed interest in agriculture and a return to the basic objective of achieving food security.

Human demand for water resources is rising at an alarming rate in response to rapid population growth, rival development requirements, and the depletion of ecological resources. In this book, Okbazghi Yohannes examines the various facets of the competition for water resources among the ten Nile River Basin countries as they compete to harness the river's resources for purposes of irrigation-based agriculture and hydropower-based industrialization. Through a careful investigation of the rival states' strategies to capture greater shares of water resources, Yohannes assesses the lasting impact on the watershed ecology in the basin and on the hydrological demand of the river itself. He proposes the formation of a radically different water regime to address the looming demographic crisis, the stark regional food insecurity, and the region's collapsing hydro-ecology. This book shows how the effort to construct a regional water regime cannot be separated from the necessity to construct an ecologically sustainable internal water regime in each co-basin state, particularly in terms of ecological resources conservation and ecosystem services protection.

This paper reviews literature on the Nile basin co-operation and issues related to this process, focusing on more recent publications. The literature on utilization and management of the Nile waters related to basin-wide cooperation efforts has been growing fast during the last decade. This review discusses and covers a wide range of issues, which include: debate on water scarcity and its potential consequences in general, and its implications for the Nile basin countries in particular; legal aspects of utilization of the Nile waters focusing on the UN Watercourse Convention of 1997; conflicts and major attempts at cooperation; divergent views and interests of the basin countries; and challenges and prospects of the recent basin-wide cooperation.

The study focuses in particular on the Nile Basin, which has 10 riparian states sharing the waters of the Nile. As water scarcity and population is the #1 problem of the 21st century, a fair and equitable distribution of the available waters among the riparian states is a must. The book is divided into 4 parts: Diplomatic, History, Legal Analysis and developmental analysis.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region worldwide, has only recently begun to fully address the issues of meeting the water needs of its rapidly growing population, to reduce the deepening poverty besetting the region and to accelerate economic growth. The Nile Basin, characterized by sharp spatial and temporal variations in water resources and including countries with different economies, social and political structures and capacities, illustrates the challenges of developing and managing the waters of the Nile River and its tributaries, lakes and wetlands equitably among its 10 riparian countries. Ethiopia, the major source of the Nile but one of the poorest countries in the Nile Basin, has recently begun to implement plans to harness more Nile water through hydroelectric and irrigation development both for national use and for transboundary development as part of the Nile Basin Initiative. The Ethiopian government and communities, by using different management approaches and resources, are trying to boost water, energy and food production, strengthen conservation efforts and mitigate potential repercussions of water resources development. These initiatives and programs have not been comprehensively examined. In this study, the editors address these and other issues surrounding water resources management in all economic and water sectors in Ethiopia within the setting of the Nile Basin, the first comprehensive treatment of this subject. The wide scope of this book is consistent with the tenets of integrated water resources management, which demand that all water uses be managed in an integrated fashion for optimum and sustainable benefits to all water users, both humans and ecosystems. This book reveals the impacts of various resource management approaches and practices in Ethiopia and the Nile Basin. Specifically, it examines how deforestation and prevailing land use practices have exacerbated soil aridity and flood events, why irrigated agriculture and hydropower development have caused floodplain degradation, livelihood hardships and water-related diseases, where industrial and agricultural development is increasingly polluting water resources, how household water supplies can be obtained through rainwater harvesting and the dependence on hydropower reduced through alternative energy sources and how misguided government policies have impeded efforts to deal with these and other challenges. Results reveal dynamic interrelationships between these processes and identify the human and environmental driving forces, which must be understood in effective integrated water resources management. Another unique contribution of this book is the examination of the role of government and communities in managing water resources in Ethiopia. Results show that the top-down approach used by the socialist Derg government in soil and water conservation and social programs exacerbated water problems and reduced community participation. Moreover, the failure of its economic program reduced agricultural production, increasing dependency on relief food and further impeding community initiatives in soil and water conservation activities. Many elements of central planning persist in spite of the decentralization drive by the current government, but there is evidence that integration of the top-down and bottom-up approaches to water resources management is necessary (and feasible) to strengthen and up-scale programs to the national level. The book identifies a number of customary water and soil management practices and institutions that may strengthen especially community-based rainwater harvesting, small-scale irrigation, reforestation, soil and water conservation and flood control efforts. This is an important book for researchers and students of resources management, rural development, hydrology and African studies.