Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary
phys.org
phys.org
And
A 1959 treaty boosted Egypt's allocation to around 66 percent of the river's flow, with 22 percent for Sudan
Wow. That sounds like it obliges Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda to collectively use no more than 12% of the Nile's flow. Colonialism was not good to Africans south of the sahara. No wonder they got together and made their own treaty.
This has been Egypt's excuse for syphoning water beyond the design elevation to their New Valley Project.
They just don't like that reasoning being used against them.
I stand corrected.
I was just not fully informed on how one sided a lot of those water use treaties were. It's a bit jarring to see the details laid out like that.
Now that one of the poor upstream states wants to use the water passing through their backyard to tackle these issues, the most important issue is who needs a given resource more?
Your own heat map shows that this isn’t the case - they also live on the coast.
That's the delta.
Earlier it was ‘all’.
More detailed excerpt for other HN readers stumbling on this comment:
> Ethiopia, one of Africa's fastest growing economies in recent years, insists the dam will not affect the onward flow of water.
> But Egypt fears its supplies will be reduced during the time it takes to fill the 74-billion-cubic-metre capacity reservoir.
> Egypt considers the dam as a threat to its existence and Sudan has warned millions of lives will be at "great risk" if Ethiopia unilaterally fills the dam.
> A decade of negotiations have failed to result in a deal.
Egypt has been taking advantage of this, allowing the "overflow" from their dam/lake nassar to be syphoned off into the desert, to the extent of trying to develop an entirely new drainage valley into farmland.
It is a mega project.
Any upriver country that is able to divert the "overflow" water before it gets too Egypt can keep it.
So it's basically an argument over who gets to keep the surplus in the water balance of the river.
>[1]Use of Nile resources is governed by the Nile Basin Initiative; but the Toshka project does not breach the agreement as water is diverted from Lake Nasser only after heavy water flows upstream have raised lake levels above 178 metres (584 ft) (see above).
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_Basin_Initiative
From the article, the Nile river is estimated to carry 84 billion cubic meters per year, so the reservoir holds roughly one Nile-year of water. Filling over 7 years means that the downstream flow would be reduced by ~1/7 during that time period.
That channel's content is remarkably well-made and gives a great insight into geopolitics. I wish most YouTube content would be half as good as Caspian Report is.
Gyude Moore: “China in Africa: An African Perspective”
Really phenomenal discussion. I felt like my level of ignorance about Africa is pretty incredible and especially from an infrastructure perspective.
* More than half of Ethiopia's 110 million people have no electric power.
* Almost all of Ethiopia is under some level of food stress.
* The Nile basin contains some 11 countries
* More than 80% of the Nile waters come out of Ethiopia
* Some 70% of the rivers in Ethiopia are parts of the Nile basin
* Out of these countries, only Egypt and Sudan use the Nile river for irrigation and power generation.
* This happened due to Colonial era agreements in which great Britain (Then ruling Egypt) brokered agreements which "gave" Egypt usage and veto rights. Most of the Nile basin countries were colonies of GB and they had no say in the matter (that I can find recorded in history). Ethiopia was an exception as it was not colonized, but it was not consulted by the British and is not signatory to the agreements. And It was fighting to maintain its independence against Europe so it had little power to spare for water politics at the time.
* In 1959, The Sudanese and Egyptians governments met and awarded each other 18.5 billion cubic meter of water and 55 billion cubic meters of water respectively. Again ignoring the other Nile basin countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia....
* Egypt is unfortunately threatening us with war if there is a drop in their water share. I can basically paraphrase their UNSC statement as saying "Peace and security will be impacted in the horn of Africa because we will start war on Ethiopia".
* I am an Ethiopian, and I realize that Egypt relies on the Nile. As far as I can see, public opinion here (to the extent I see it) is not about depriving Egypt of water and life, it's about living a life of dignity. It's about a fair and equitable use of the water.
Again, unfortunately, Egypt is signing military deals with Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda in what is perceived here as an intimidation campaign. My two cents, there is 0 chance these countries will ever stand against Ethiopia regarding the Nile water usage. =I am perplexed that they are making an enemy out of Ethiopia when 80% of the Nile comes from here. That's no way to secure your future.
As a lover of ancient history, I am fascinated by Egypt and their reach history. I think the way to secure Egypt's future is by cooperation with all Nile basin countries to protect and further develop the Nile river basin such that the we raise the total water contained in the basin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_politics_in_the_Nile_Bas...
Random question since you're from the country - what are the feelings in Ethiopia with the elections, Tigray, etc.? I'm headed there in 1.5 weeks for my first time.
As for Tigray, people here are really pessimistic. Over the past 8 months, the Ethiopian government narrative was that the people of Tigray and the political party that rules them (the TPLF) were two different entities and that the former needs to be free from the latter (TPLF has ruled there probably for more than 4 decades, they had their shot).
And the TPLF narrative was that it, and the people of Tigray are one and the same. That TPLF was the only power that can protect/save Tigray. And that if it doesn't get its way it will take Tigray out of the Ethiopian Federation.
After 8 month of conflict, the only reason TPLF still exists is because it has popular support of the Tigrayan public. And the PM basically acknowledged as much.
TPLF has been a bad actor in Ethiopian life. I personally will not be okay with 70 year old TPLF cadres and generals continuing the game they played for 30 years. And I believe the overwhelming majority of Ethiopians will not accept them.
So, if Tigray accepts TPLF, and the rest of Ethiopia rejects it completely, then we're stuck.
Just like there are people in Tigray that want to break away, there are people in the rest of Ethiopia that want them to break away (paraphrasing, "nothing comes out of Tigray, their ambition and their actual population size is not matching up and they're not worth the trouble". This is really dangerous for Tigray because, despite their bravado, it's one of the poorest area in Ethiopia. It has food security issues even in the best of times. TPLF seems to be wanting to leverage the threat of breaking away to get concessions. I don't think they realize just how bad public opinion has soured against Tigray.
Of course, take everything with a grain of salt --- I'm not in politics. My sources are just people here (Like my taxi driver from Tigray who was upset and concerned about a youtuber calling for Tigray to break away).
What do you make of the recent ceasefire? Do you think people have negative opinions of the fact that Eritreans were in country and consider it a violation of sovereignty? I'm not sure if you're in tech or not but you're on HN so I'm curious what the tech scene is like & what you make of the new safaricom deal?
When it comes to Eritrea, They, for a long time were not in good terms with Tigrayans. This animosity actually predates the current conflict or the border war. There are a lot of nuances involved but generally speaking, it wouldn't be wrong to say those two are not friends. Of course the current conflict multiplied the hate a thousand fold.
The reason I'm writing this down is to give you a sense of the broader picture. In this scenario, an Independent Tigray will be a small and mostly very poor population in a dry area, with unfriendly neighbors. And the area has little natural resources to speak of, so it's not like USA or China would care to invest long term in it. The people of Tigray are hardy and disciplined but TPLF is a tyrannical organization, it's not the kind of government in which free thought and enterprise can thrive. In such a scenario, breaking away from Ethiopia don't make much sense. I suspect it would be disastrous. I think they know this.
* In my opinion, they started the war not to break away from Ethiopia but to topple the current Ethiopian government which they hate for breaking their near 3 decade rule of Ethiopia <-- I can unpack this statement a lot more. In the decades they were in power, they had morphed into a kleptocratic regime which enjoyed its life by wasting public money (like a billion USD on a fertilizer plant spent, with nothing completed, around 4 billion usd spent to build a series of sugar plantations and factories with nothing completed after 10 years of development... the list is long). The leaders were sending their kids for a vacation in Europe on public money while more than a million people in Tigray required food assistance to survive.
I think they started the war to topple the government and retain at least some of these benefits they lost under PM Abiy and perhaps more importantly, work to create a more opportune environment that would allow Tigray to break away.
* About the ceasefire, it's good and absolutely essential. THey have to farm this rainy season or the food insecurity will be 10x worse. But there is a problem, TPLF and most of Tigrayans *that I have talked to* thinks they won a military victory and they want to use the momentum to "liberate" western Tigray. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if fighting resumed in those areas.
* As for Eritrea, they were probably invited in at a time of great danger for the Ethiopian military and they helped. People are grateful here, not angry. Of course some of the senseless atrocities have caused the enthusiasm to die down a bit but there seems to be a consensus (right or wrong) that most coverage of the war has a bit of propaganda in it.. a bit of manufactured consent, when people hear about atrocities, they're immediately wondering about who wrote it, what their motive is... this reduces the impact the news would have.
* I am really excited for the Safaricom deal. But I and a lot of people are expecting the US governments to place some sanctions on us wrecking the deal. So not sure if it will go through. I do indeed work in tech. And I have been working remotely for the past year and half. Bad and expensive internet connection is extremely frustrating. And it's hard for collogues abroad to understand the level of difficulty. Imagine trying to communicate a weird bug in the codebase that you don't even fully understand to collogues in Europe (with broken English) only find out you were disconnected minutes ago. It's painful. The safaricom deal promises 8 billion USD investment in telecom. I am absolutely excited for that and will switch if it's better.
The tech scene is unfortunately NOT as developed as it should be. Internet connectivity, power issues are factors, government procedures and policy over the decades. I think they feared tech and their policies directly and indirectly affected the industry.
An instance of government indirectly stifling growth: There is a government body called Information Network Security Agency (INSA). It was actually founded by the current PM. He was removed and over time, the agency started to moonlight as a the preferred tech company that government agencies work with. They had tens of thousands of employees and can win contracts due to political connections. In the past decade it dominated most government contracts for making software. They thought they were saving money but it was those kinds of contracts that would have allowed the private sector to develop. And to no ones surprised, the stuff they did was often of low quality and over budget.
And 5 or 6 years ago the government wanted to ban VOIP tech (prison time for using). In a separate instance, I very vaguely remember the then director of the agency, a military general (From TPLF ofc) talking about how local developers should consider working on security products rather than communication apps.
That said, there are a few interesting tech companies. We have the local clones of Uber. And they're pretty good (The Tigrayan taxi I mentioned earlier was actually driving for one of these). Food delivery startups. There are lots of companies developing health care logistic related software (lots of funding from USA on that area). A major payment platform in Nigeria (PAGA) is developed here also. There are labs that work on ML, I think the robot the Saudi's gave citizenship to was partially developed here. Right now, one of the current PM's initiative is to digitize Ethiopia. A focus area within the initiative are mobile payment solutions. This will breath new life on both business and tech.
The past vividly shows some countries launch wars exactly because of internal problems, not vice versa.
The Egyptian government is not exactly a candy.
It's led by a caricature character military putschist, whose mental faculties have long left him.
> * Almost all of Ethiopia is under some level of food stress.
Where is a country like Ethiopia getting all the money for such a mega-project?
> * This happened due to Colonial era agreements in which great Britain
Typical, colonial forces left a mess everywhere they went. India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, pretty much all of Africa, my history on South America and Asia are rusty but I bet they right messed up things there too.
What's crazy is how things still are in such disarray so long after they retreated.
The cost is $4.2 billion according to the article, and Ethiopia's GDP is $272 billion. It's not a mystery to see the project get financing, though I imagine the risk of war warped the deal somewhat.
The major source: For most of the decade, for each bank loan, 27% of it goes to the construction of the dam. And then, most employees have given at least 1 month of their salary to the dam.
Are you talking about taxes?
I think it's adorable that you think they "retreated".
Perhaps in another forum I can give you a "low-down" on why the African former colonies are an economic mess, why France and England left physically but not politically or economically, and ofcourse why African leaders visit European powers as one of the first things they do after elections. I may also wax on and wax off about China in Africa. Maybe Libya and the crisis there too.
Perhaps you should first learn how to be polite and first try to ask questions, before assuming everyone is dumber than you.
What is “so long”? Reading online, I see that Ethiopia was not fully colonized, but Europe/UK were attacking and meddling in its affairs even in the 1930s.
What most of the West doesn’t realize, is that colonization is majorly impactful and leads to disarray for decades, if not centuries. Countries need time to stabilize, after being systematically dismantled and robbed by colonizers.
This seems to take the view that pre-colonisation these countries were modern functioning states; and that it was the coloniser which "destabilised them".
However this seems to be rarely, if ever, the case. Colonised countries were extremely pre-modern compared to coloniser-states, and as far as I'm aware, routinely the purpose of colonisation was to establish such thing as a functioning state -- for the sake of enabling trade and commerce to be conducted reliably.
Here we should also distinguish the activities of a coloniser-state (eg., the UK) vs., eg., that of an individual eg., Leopold.
That's just a polite way to describe looting a colony.
Consider the situation here, where the British got together with... a British colony... to claim near-exclusive water rights to the Nile. This is important enough almost 100 years later that Egypt is threatening war over it.
The colonial project in Europe was concomitant with the development of western concepts of national sovereignty and the emergence of the modern bureaucratic state. In fact, many features of modern governments emerged specifically as mechanisms to implement colonial policies, and the material resources that were used to build up the institutions of many Western states were largely extracted from the colonies. In light of that, it seems strange for you to critique colonized polities for being "pre-modern" prior to colonization when European colonizers were themselves largely pre-modern before colonization efforts began, and themselves modernized—both in material terms, and in terms of the sophistication of their institutions—at the expense of their colonies.
That "the purpose of colonization was to establish such a thing as a functioning state" is only true in a technical sense. The ultimate purpose of colonization was extraction, and in order to implement extractive policies, modern bureaucratic institutions needed to be established, both at home and in the colonies. Many colonizers, when they departed, may have left their colonies with governing institutions that resembled the institutions that the colonizers had created at home—but only in the way that franchisee businesses resemble the businesses of their franchisors. Colonial governments depended entirely on their metropole for essential aspects of governance, and could not serve any meaningful function without tight integration with their home country governments. This even remains true of some post-colonial governments today.
Even if colonial institutions had been established "for the sake of enabling trade and commerce" those institutions would have been insufficient to govern independent states. But the terms "trade and commerce" presume the existence of peer counter-parties who are able to negotiate at an arms length to arrive at arrangements that benefit all parties. Colonial institutions were not at all established for that purpose—they were established for the purpose of resource extraction at the expense of a subjugated population. A governmental orientation towards trade and commerce could have given former colonies at least a starting point on the road towards economic development, but in actuality the governing institutions that former colonies inherited were entirely oriented towards giving the industries of their former colonizers uninterrupted and privileged access to cheap labor and cheap resources.
European colonial governments employed many different tactics to deliberately destabilize colonized polities—destroying, subjugating or co-opting pre-colonial (and post-colonial!) governing institutions; intentionally pitting rival ethnic, class and religious groups against each other; creating borders within the contiguous territory of cohesive ethnic & linguistic groups, while forcing groups with disparate languages and cultures to share the same government [1]; denying indigenous people equal (or, in many cases, any) opportunities for social, economic, and political advancement; suppressing (and often stamping out) indigenous languages, cultures and religions; suppressing independent local industries that might compete with industries in the metropole; and suppressing independent political thought and local political institutions—all of which had the effect of preventing the development of institutions within the colonies that could keep pace with the development of modern institutions in Europe.
The underlying objective of the colonial project itself, however, was perhaps the most destabilizing. The system as a whole was designed and implemented to maximize the flow of economic value out of the colonies and into the metropole. Every institution was optimized for that purpose, and any element of local politics or culture that did not contribute in some way to that effort was discouraged, suppressed, or eliminated, through the (often violent) application of state power.
GP is entirely correct to write that "colonization is majorly impactful and leads to disarray for decades, if not centuries," and that "countries need time to stabilize, after being systematically dismantled and robbed by colonizers."
Though even if the British had been in control of Ethiopia, I would argue it was still problematic to allocate 70% of their water to Egypt. It was just a fundamentally bad arrangement. So fundamentally bad that I can only assume the British, at the time, had no idea how the Nile actually worked. Maybe the field of hydrology was not quite so well developed, and the Nile was not quite so well studied? I try not to attribute to malice what can reasonably be explained by ineptitude.
> More than half of Ethiopia's 110 million people have no electric power
Might be true but it is a wide problem and have a root causes that not all belong to the current issue, maybe you forget you are currently in a civil war with army have actions that are war crimes.
>More than 80% of the Nile waters come out of Ethiopia
Nile river is historically and from legal perspective an international river not an Ethiopian property. Violating this always comes with consequences.
>* Out of these countries, only Egypt and Sudan use the Nile river for irrigation and power generation.
This a complete bold lie usually spread by people who try to misrepresent the problem. Here is a Wikipedia page the list all of Ethiopian dams for various function like irrigation and hydropower generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dams_and_reservoirs_in_Ethiopi...
>This happened due to Colonial era agreements in which great Britain (Then ruling Egypt) brokered agreements which "gave" Egypt usage and veto rights. but it was not consulted by the British and is not signatory to the agreements. And It was fighting to maintain its independence against Europe so it had little power to spare for water politics at the time.
There are two points not just one. But these Colonial era agreements are the same which gave Ethiopia benishangul-gumuz (which belonged to Sudan at this time) was between British and Ethiopian emperor also. Also, all treaties was with Ethiopia being independent and took even land from Sudan. The other point if you are just saying we were forced to do so. Okay lets go back to revise all this era agreement and give benishangul-gumuz back to Sudan (it is the area where the dam built) and let's revise everything. This is literary what international laws' violation means. If you just rely on the fact the can ignore it doesn't expect people who will get hurt to act and even attack you. When US get an existential problem with USSR have nuclear missiles nearby in CUBA didn't buy the argument that cuba can do whatever it wants.
>* In 1959, The Sudanese and Egyptians governments met and awarded each other 18.5 billion cubic meter of water and 55 billion cubic meters of water respectively. Again ignoring the other Nile basin countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia....
This is an agreement about how they share their mutual share, notice that this agreement didn't violate the previous agreements from the colonial era.
> Egypt is unfortunately threatening us with war if there is a drop in their water share
Maybe because 10 years of negotiating that they provided Ethiopia with time it kept wasting until they do whatever they want and putting existential treat to its people. Ethiopian actions are the root cause of the instability. Bold lies that Ethiopian keep pushing publicly is one reason of escalations, a couple of months ago the Ethiopian PM claimed that there are no soldiers from Eritrea joining the attack on tigray area then when the truth comes he was forced to say it. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-conflict/ethiopi...
>I am an Ethiopian, and I realize that Egypt relies on the Nile. As far as I can see, public opinion here (to the extent I see it) is not about depriving Egypt of water and life, it's about living a life of dignity. It's about a fair and equitable use of the water
The problem was never that Egypt opposing to building the dam which almost get built. It is how long does it take for fill the dam and make it longer so that it reduce its negative effect and have enforceable agreement about the dam which Ethiopia spent 10 years of negotiation denying. Don't talk on "not about depriving Egypt of water and life"
>Again, unfortunately, Egypt is signing military deals with Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda in what is perceived here as an intimidation campaign
What is the problem of doing this? Ethiopia have troops from Eritrea helping them to attack innocent people and troops in Somalia which used to intervene in their domestic affairs. Can you call this a hostile action in the region?
Last thing I want to add is to please read the "Treaties affecting Nile water use" section of the Wikipedia article you linked because it will tell you about the misinformation in the parent comment.
In particular, the word "lie" implies not just being wrong, but intentional deceit. Since we can't know others' intent via internet comments, that's rarely a fair word to use and it mostly just escalates flamewars.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Ethiopia has never claimed the Nile is its sole property. It's seeking fair use of a dam on its own territory and equitable sharing of the waters in a manner that doesn't infringes on its sovereignty.
>...a Wikipedia page the list all of Ethiopian dams
I don't see a single dam aside from the GERD on the list that's on the Nile. So I don't see how you could say it's a lie. Are you suggesting a dam on any tributary river in Ethiopia is subject to Egypt's wishes?
>But these Colonial era agreements are the same...
No they are not. Ethiopia was NOT a party to the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian treaty unlike the 1902 Anglo-Ethiopian treaty regarding the border w/ Sudan.
>This is an agreement about how they share their mutual share...
According to you, mutual share means that Egypt gets 66% Sudan gets 22%, the rest is lost to evaporation and Ethiopia gets 0. Just as agreed upon by Egypt & the British in the colonial agreement.
>10 years of negotiating that they provided Ethiopia...
Curious that you characterize Egypt's approach as negotiation when 10 years ago when Ethiopia started building the Dam, Egypt's president "negotiated" by stating that "all options are on the table". Egypt has obstinately held on to the idea that it is entitled to a specific amount of water it has historically been afforded per year in perpetuity regardless of the conditions of the Nile or in Ethiopia.
The fact of the matter is the Egyptian government is upset that it is no longer capable of holding a monopoly over the Nile.
1- An agreement about the dam and how it operates because when it is in full operation and something happen this will be catastrophic to sudan and Egypt
2- Reduce the impact of water shortage to egypt ans sudan by extending the timeline for fulfillment
Again these two points is always the core of negotiations not the idea of dam existence itself. So saying this is not even something for a discussion.
* the agreement between sudan and Egypt is about how to share their percentage or what drainage countries get. Do you say that all other countries get 0 drops of water from the Nile?
* In 2015 Egypt had agreed that Ethiopia can build the dam and continue negotiations about the reducing impact and agreement about the dam which Ethiopia evaded this for 6 years? What can you say about that? People who wants a military actions will not negotiate for a 10 years. Take isreal and their indirect and direct attacks on Iranian nuclear program because they see it as a potential existential threat ( which is something doable that they will have). If Ethiopia is refusing all the diplomatic solution to cooperate and wants to do what it wants only, what do you think a US will do if it was in Egypt place. Taking US history into consideration I doubt they will negotiate before paralyzing Ethiopian army at least.
* regarding treaties, Ethiopia took the land from sudan with an agreement with British against Sudanese will, it is a colonial era agreement that Ethiopian ignore when they talk about their rights and how these treaty about nile was forced on them. So extend the logic and get the land back and then negotiate a fair deal with all nile countries.
Hint: Until a couple of months ago, Ethiopians were occupying large area from Sudanese land ( even without an colonial treaty) and they said they will act by military if sudan didn't withraw from their lands. https://www.reuters.com/article/sudan-ethiopia-int-idUSKBN29...
And thanks for down voting.
It sounds obvious to me that a dam on a tributary river to Nile is for the purpose of the problem here like a dam on Nile since it reduces the water available downwards in Nile.
So it's a weird dialogue: on the one hand, the only relevant dam, capacity-wise, is the GERD. On the other, there are patently plenty of other damns in the Nile river basin.
(Obviously, anybody who is more aware of the issues here should correct me - my feeling is that Ethiopia and Egypt are being weirdly bellicose over an issue that is totally solvable to mutual satisfaction.)
If those growth rates continue the per capita amount of Nile water will halve in 25-30 years.
Ethiopians have always been united when it comes to the GERD because it's not just a political stunt. It's a matter of development and survival just as it is for the Egyptian people. That's why it's best for Egypt's government refrain from making threats and negotiate in good faith.
The Nile is an international river. All of us accept that. But you should reconsider if you think Ethiopia will accept any treaties that Egypt signed with its colonial master (without Ethiopia being present).
As for consequences, We've been facing the consequences of this for all our lives in the form of food insecurity, famine, rolling blackouts. I will trade food and power for Egyptian military threats or American sanctions. So your consequences are not really that scary considering what's at stake.
* There are 11 countries in the basin. Of the 11, only Egypt and Sudan are using it for any development project.
* Since it's an international resource, we should all be using it.
* Since Egypt and Sudan gets 100% of the benefit, they will likely see a decrease. That's the physical reality
* Right now, Ethiopia gets 0%. We'll increase it.
The gotcha comments don't do much to address the reality on the ground. And it's not particularly merit-worthy for me to bother going point by point "debunking" you. And we're already deep in flame-war territory which is strongly discouraged on HN.
Good luck
Instead of talking about legal perspectives or of interests of Ethiopia or of Egypt, one can talk in terms of 'reasonableness'.
It is reasonable to use the water that drains off Ethiopian watershed; here, Egypt can't use some colonial era treaties unless it wants to colonize Ethiopia. No reasonable person will accept the claim that 95% of Nile water should go to Sudan and Egypt.
You also raise another reasonable point: "It is how long does it take for fill the dam and make it longer so that it reduce its negative effect". This is something many people agree with. However, this can't be solved using the historical outflows to the Nile. Just because 95 percent of the water went downstream to Sudan and Egypt for the last 900 years, one can't expect Ethiopia to release 95% of the water this year. This is where the real dispute lies, and that dispute manifests in terms of "how slow one has to fill up the dam". Maybe, both Egypt and Ethiopia can put percentages: Egypt can say "just release 80% this year, decrease 5% every year until it reaches 50%", or Ethiopia can say "we will release 10% every year until the dam is full". That way, one can see where both parties stand.
Law without violence(enforcement) is useless. Colonial powers had that power when they assigned most of the water to Egypt and Sudan. One can't expect this now.
There's a pretty real "mutual destruction" incentive to keep the conflict contained. Dams are vulnerable.
I imagine that a campaign to improve education in Egypt and train the populace for jobs to reduce Nile dependence would be a major boost to the Egyptian economy. It might drive the country to innovate and fuel a boom in their tech and engineering sector.
Are there any feasible projects to that end?
Given that this can easily be understood as an existential threat to Egypt, war seems likely.
I think you need to assess the situation and calculate the costs and benefits of every approach.
- How many people will die due to war and how many will die due to the dam?
- How long will it take for a war to yield results?
- Are there other possible solutions that will yield results more quickly?
- What will be the effects of the different approaches?
I haven't searched for a list, but Israel desalinates >500M m³ of seawater per year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...
Saudi Arabia is going to start building solar domes for the line city Neom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvN1oV3AJ90
Cario, Egypt has ~3.4k hours of sun per year https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-hours-Sunshi...
They need about 80B m³ per year (mostly due to agriculture) of which 55.5B m³ come from the Nile.
- https://www.worldometers.info/water/egypt-water/#water-use
- https://water.fanack.com/egypt/water-use/
Those 55.5B m³ won't just disappear like that.
Again, how much would it cost to scale desalination up, reduce agricultural water and land use, and how long would it take to do it? How much would it cost to wage a war and when would it be over? Years? Decades?
Would it be easier to find out who's been contracted to build the damn and find a way to get them not to do it?
---------
It's easy to be the "it won't work" person and to reach for the bluntest tool in the metaphorical shed without putting in a modicum of effort to explore another avenue.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-10/ethiopian...
EDIT: as in veto any UNSC response to the strike
From: https://web.archive.org/web/20130606172030/http://www.washin...
Moreover, the west has a vested interest to keep el-sisi happy. There is a suspicion about the recent political instability in Ethiopia is partly because of Egypt
http://nemozen.semret.org/2021/06/pay-any-price-bear-any-bur...
A. The dam already contains more than 4.9 billion cubic meters of water. That along with the wet season rain will mean breaching it will result in catastrophic flooding of Sudan which will result in death and loss of arable land.
Each day that goes on, the water level is increasing, after a some time, Egypt itself will face flooding.
B. Egypt has powerful military but it seems it was designed to fight Israel, not Ethiopia. The distances are just too great. Not many nations in the world have that kind of power projection in the world. That's an exclusive club of great powers like Russia, France, and superpowers like the USA and China. Most Egyptian fighter/bomber aircraft don't have the range to reach Ethiopia. And Sudan seem to be against war so they're unlikely to grant them passage as they will be the ones that suffer the consequences of a breached dam.
The Egyptian airforce is getting new jets from France and Russia. Last I checked, which was months ago, only a few of those jets were delivered. It's unclear that the air crew have the resources, time, training to accomplish the difficult task of dam busting.
C. The renaissance dam is a gravity dam. Giant concrete structure. It's not going to be easy to destroy. And attempts could just make it collapse on the water spillways. Which might end up even more disastrous.
D. Dam or no dam, the water still flows from Ethiopia. And the Nile is not like the Amazon river in that it doesn't contain as much water. If Egyptian leadership plays a zero-sum game, where only they use the Nile then Ethiopia has zero incentive to protect and develop the water. In the age of climate change, this is a huge factor. Diverting some of the smaller tributaries would at most require a single grader and a few days of work. Diverting some 10 or 20% of the water would not be difficult. And that is far more disastrous to the stated objective of Egypt (Which is to maintain the colonial era agreement that allows them and Sudan 100% of the water).
E. Ethiopia is currently a divided country. But when it comes to the dam, its people are 100% on the same page. Most western lenders don't finance any project on the Nile due to Egyptian lobbying. So Ethiopian populace paid for it out of pocket. Most salaried people payed for it out of pocket. WHat that usually means is giving up a month of your salary for the dam. And When Ethiopia is united, it is capable of putting up a good fight.
As for the PRC, who do you think loaned to Ethiopia the money for buying the generators?
And also, PRC has dams on similar rivers. It unlikely to positively accept such an act.
To put this into concrete terms: the Renaissance dam is 476ft tall. According to Wikipedia[0], non-nuclear bunker buster bombs are limited to a penetration depth of ~20ft of reinforced concrete, which would barely dent a dam this size. Even the USAF would have a hard time destroying this dam from the air.
If I was an unpopular regime, I would see this, and feel pretty good about my chances of exploiting it. A war you can probably win against a much more powerful enemy, over an issue you have broad support for, is like a golden goose for an unstable government.
You can be as obnoxious and intransigent as you like, because the negotiations will be behind closed doors, and you'll still seem like you're representing the national interest.
On the other hand, if you're Egypt, a war you will probably lose is also very valuable. It's a good way to rally people around the flag when it looks like it might happen, then if it does come down to it, often 'probably losing' a war is way better than definitely losing a leadership challenge.
So again, the incentives are to be obnoxious and intransigent. You don't want this issue to go away - it's a really good option to have in your back pocket if you get into trouble.
So the politics here are pretty bleak.
I don't understand what this means.
There's also a lot more Amazon river to hold water.
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/03/egypt-us-tensio...
That certainly seems pretty ally-like.
Egypt was supported by the USSR for much of the Cold War. Prying them away from the Soviet's sphere, at the same time building a buffer for Israel, was a major coup. The aid is the price of that, regardless of who is in power in Cairo. Again, US ally doesn't buy SU-35 from Russia.
Middle East history and politics is mind bogglingly complicated. It's naive to try to reduce it to one sentence. American only Middle East ally is Israel. Iraq and Iran used to be close partners. I wouldn't be surprised if Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey will be mentioned the same way some day.
This is Egypt’s lively hood. They won’t allow this to happen.
While the Biden Administration is less absolutely in line with Egypt than Trump was on the issue, they only seem to be relatively deemphasizing GERD to apply more pressure on other humanitarian and security issues with Ethiopia. While I can't see them sanctioning a unilateral attack, absent some UNSC resolution that gets both sides onboard, I can't see them taking action against Egypt, even by way of anything more than symbolic at the UN, over it.
Wait, you think the PRC will veto UNSC action on the dam (what is currently being considered) to force an Egyptian unilateral military response? What's the gain?
By 'airforce action on the dam' I assume you mean aircraft bombing of the dam. By when would this happen? (ie when would the bet be closed?)
[edit] I will admit I thought your idea was crazy, but you are not totally wrong looking into it, but this is about Egypt objecting it being filled in one year, which they'll let pass if conditions are ok rather than war, and going from talking about it to actually bombing it means they have think about what if Ethiopia bombs the Aswan Dam in response. Geneva Convention also comes into it.
They won't do it, all over it's being filled to quick. Bomb some military installations to make them slow down instead.
The world will be a better place when we abolish dams and replace them with actually clean energy.
It doesn’t make sense to ask them to try to wrestle with that kind of poverty and also shoulder the same burden as countries using hundreds of times more energy.
I am tired of desensitizing myself away from the plight of 4 foot 10 women carrying a load of firewood heavier than them.