Life or death for Egypt 

Ethiopia started filling Grand Renaissance, a giant hydroelectric dam it is building on the Blue Nile, its water minister said on Wednesday after talks with Sudan and Egypt over the structure became deadlocked.

Ethiopia says the colossal dam offers a critical opportunity to pull millions of its nearly 110 million citizens out of poverty. The project is the centrepiece of Ethiopia's bid to become Africa's biggest power exporter. 

"The construction of the dam and the filling of the water go hand in hand," Water Minister Seleshi Bekele said in comments broadcast on television. "The filling of the dam doesn't need to wait until the completion of the dam."

The water level increased from 525 metres (1,720 feet) to 560 metres (1,840 feet), said Bekele.

Egypt has asked Ethiopia for urgent clarification on the matter, its foreign ministry said. The Blue Nile is a tributary of the Nile from which Egypt gets 90 percent of its fresh water.

Cairo told the United Nations last month it faces an "existential threat" from the hydroelectric dam.

Sudan's government, meanwhile, said water levels on the Blue Nile had declined by 90 million cubic metres per day after Ethiopia started filling the dam on its side of the border.

Sudan rejects unilateral actions taken by any party as negotiating efforts continue between the two countries and Egypt, its irrigation ministry said in a statement.

"It was evident from the flow metres in the Dimim border station with Ethiopia that there is a retreat in the water levels … confirming the closure of the gates of the Renaissance Dam," it said.

'Sovereign right'

Relying on the Nile for more than 90 percent of its water supply and already facing high water stress, Egypt fears a devastating effect on its population of 100 million.

In June, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry warned conflict could erupt if the UN fails to intervene, as the dam endangers the lives of 150 million Egyptians and Sudanese

Ahmed Soliman, a research fellow with Chatham House, noted Egypt's water requirements already outpace its availability.

"What we have in Egypt is a significant gap between the amount of water they produce and the amount of water they consume. And with a rapidly growing population of more than 100 million, it points to this problem only getting worse," Soliman told Al Jazeera. 

Awol Allo, from Keele University in the UK, said Egypt is demanding adherence to a 1959 water treaty, signed between Cairo and Khartoum, that gave Egypt the lion's share of the Nile's annual flow.

Ethiopia was not included in that colonial-era treaty.

"I think Ethiopia has been negotiating for a considerable amount of time in good faith to reach a settlement on this issue, but the Egyptians insist on the 1959 treaty as the starting point," Allo told Al Jazeera.

"There is strong public support for the Ethiopian government to get on with the dam. The majority of Ethiopians are on the same page - that is it is their sovereign right to fill and open the dam."

Africa's largest dam

Cairo was anxious to secure a legally binding deal that would guarantee minimum flows and a mechanism for resolving disputes before the dam started operating.

Sudan stands to benefit from the project through access to cheap electricity and reduced flooding, but it has also raised fears over the dam's operation.

The dam is being built 15km (nine miles) from the border with Sudan on the Blue Nile, the source of most of the Nile's waters. 

The latest round of negotiations between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the contentious dam ended with no agreement on Tuesday, according to Egyptian and Sudanese officials.

The failure sank modest hopes the three countries could resolve their differences and sign an agreement on the dam's operation before Ethiopia began to fill the $4.6bn Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), set to be Africa's largest.

Ethiopia says more than 60 percent of the country is dry land with no sustaining water resources, while Egypt is endowed with groundwater and has access to seawater that could be desalinated.

Addis Ababa had previously pledged to start storing water in the dam's vast reservoir at the start of the wet season in July, when rains flood the Blue Nile.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/ethiopia-begins-filling-grand-renaissance-dam-blue-nile-200715135111146.html

A war in Africa?

The Nile River, Arabic Baḥr Al-Nīl or Nahr Al-Nīl, is one of the longest rivers in the world together with the Amazon and the Mississippi-Missouri. It rises south of the Equator and flows northward through northeastern Africa to drain into the Mediterranean Sea. It has a length of about 6,650 kilometres and drains an area estimated at 3,349,000 square kilometres. Its basin includes parts of Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. Its most distant source is the Kagera River in Burundi.

Danger of war?

Egypt relies on the Nile for 90% of its water. and 85% of the river flow comes from the Blue Niles, which would be affected by Ethiopian use or consumption of its water.
It has historically asserted that having a stable flow of the Nile waters is a matter of survival in a country where water is scarce.

A 1929 treaty (and a subsequent one in 1959) gave Egypt and Sudan rights to nearly all of the Nile waters. The colonial-era document also gave Egypt veto powers over any projects by upstream countries that would affect its share of the waters.

Neither agreement made any allowance for the water needs of the other riparian states that were not parties to the deal, including Ethiopia, whose Blue Nile contributes much of the river waters.

Ethiopia has said it should not be bound by the decades-old treaty and went ahead and started building its dam at the start of the Arab Spring in March 2011 without consulting Egypt. 
It is important to notice that the Nile flows through the Egyptian city of Aswan around 920km south of the capital Cairo

Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi was quoted as saying in September last year that it would never have got under way had Egypt not been distracted by the political turmoil.

One of the North African country's main concerns is that if the water flow drops it could affect Lake Nasser, the reservoir further downriver, behind Egypt's Aswan Dam, even though it only accounts for a small share of Egypt's electricity.

Ethiopia says one of the previous preconditions that Egypt had put for the agreement was that the dam should be connected to the Aswan dam.

Mr Seleshi told the BBC that he had explained to the Egyptians that it was "difficult to connect the two dams".

"After that they had backed down a bit on the issue but they have brought the idea back today to some extent," he said.

Egypt also fears that the dam could restrict its already scarce supply of the Nile waters, which is almost the only water source for its citizens.

It could also affect transport on the Nile in Egypt if the water level is too low and affect the livelihood of farmers who depend on the water for irrigation.

Why does Ethiopia want such a big dam?

The $4bn (£3bn) dam is at the heart of Ethiopia's manufacturing and industrial dreams. When completed it is expected to be able to generate a massive 6,000 megawatts of electricity.

Ethiopia has an acute shortage of electricity, with 65% of its population not connected to the grid.

The energy generated will be enough to have its citizens connected and sell the surplus power to neighbouring countries.

Ethiopia also sees the dam as a matter of national sovereignty.

The dam project does not rely on external funding and relies on government bonds and private funds to pay for the project.

The country has been critical of what it considers foreign interference in the matter.

Does anyone else benefit?

Yes. Neighbouring countries including Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Djibouti and Eritrea are likely to benefit from the power generated by the dam.

es the dam will be finished in

For Sudan there is the added advantage that the flow of the river would be regulated by the dam - meaning it would be the same all-year round.

Usually the country suffers from serious flooding in August and September.

Could the dispute lead to a war?

There have been fears that the countries could be drawn into a conflict should the dispute not be resolved.

In 2013, there were reports of a secret recording showing Egyptian politicians proposing a range of hostile acts against Ethiopia over the building of the dam.

President Sisi has also been quoted as saying that Egypt would take all the necessary measures to protect their rights to the Nile waters.

In October last year, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told MPs that "no force" could stop Ethiopia from building the dam.

The International Crisis Group warned last year that the countries "could be drawn into conflict" over the dam.

The fact that the US intervened shows the seriousness of the situation - and the need to break the deadlock.

Egypt sought the intervention of the US on the impasse, after President Sisi requested that President Trump mediate the conflict, which Ethiopia was initially reluctant to accept.

A conflict between the two states, which are both US allies, could draw global interest as it would put millions of civilians at risk.

It would threaten the vital international trade route through the Suez Canal and along the Horn of Africa, according to analysis by the Washington Institute.

So what happens now?

The next step will be for the water ministers, along with their countries' foreign ministers, to try and come to a deal before the deadline set last year of 15 January.

The timeline was set in November after a meeting between the parties and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin and World Bank President David Malpass.

So the parties representing the countries at the heart of the dispute are expected to convene again in Washington later.

"The first [option] is mediation, to see it with a mediator. Second is an issue of facilitation.

"These issues need an agreement of the three countries. Article 10 doesn't say it will be based on the desire from one country," Ethiopia's water minister told the BBC.

rump hopes the US can broker a deal between the two US allies

If they still can't agree by 15 January, the negotiators will request another mediator, or refer the matter to the heads of states, as agreed in November last year.

"What will be most appropriate for us is to present the report to our leader since there might be [progress] if they [the leaders] solve it," Mr Seleshi said.

On Sunday, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed asked South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to also help mediate in the dispute.

Mr Abiy said that, as incoming chair of the African Union, Mr Ramaphosa could help solve the problem peacefully.

The Nile:

a threatened river and a river-dependent civilization

The Nile flows from south to north over 6,695km from its first tributary - the Ruvyironza River in Burundi - before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. 

The Nile Basin, which is a network of connected ecosystems, spans 11 countries: Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt. 

The river consists of two main tributaries known as the White Nile and the Blue Nile. These rivers meet at the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. 

From there, the unified river is joined by the Atbarah River before reaching Egypt in the north. The Nile is the only river that crosses through five distinct climate zones. The map shows how the river crosses from a tropical rainy climate to a semi-tropical one, then on to a semi-arid climate before the arid Sahara Desert and finally into the Mediterranean.

Slow and steady

Scientists believe the Nile to be between 20 and 30 million years old. In its current form, it is considered the oldest and longest river on the planet. It contains more than 100 islands, Egypt being home to 22 of them. The construction of dams on the Nile, including the Renaissance Dam, is expected to severely impact the biodiversity of these islands and the people who rely on them. Although the river is long, compared to other major rivers it is considered very slow. It is estimated to take up to three months for water to flow from Lake Victoria in the south to the Mediterranean Sea in the north. 

Colonial-era treaties

In 1929, Egypt and Britain signed the Nile Waters Agreement. Britain signed as a representative of Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Sudan. The document recognised Egypt’s right to the waters of the Nile as well as the right to veto any irrigation projects that would affect its share of the river's water. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan signed another accord that supplemented the previous agreement. It gave Egypt the right to an annual share of 55.5 billion cubic metres (66%) and Sudan 18.5bn cubic metres (22%). Ethiopia was not consulted. The remaining 12 percent of the river's 84 billion cubic metre annual water supply is lost to evaporation. Britain benefitted from the agreement as it was, at the time, taking advantage of Egypt's water-intensive crops, including cotton. In 1999, 10 Nile Basin countries formed the Nile Basin Initiative, namely Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. This intergovernmental partnership aimed to develop cooperation, share socioeconomic benefits, and promote regional peace and security.

Water resource for 280 million people

The Nile Basin is shared by 280 million people across 11 countries. The basin is one of the largest in the world, covering approximately 10% of the entire African continent. Despite this, many countries in the region face a water deficit. Growing populations, economic development and climate change have placed additional strains on water resources. The infographic below highlights the number of people who live in the Nile Basin as a ratio of each country's population.

From Ethiopia to Egypt: United by the Nile, separated by the dam

In the next section we take you along the Blue Nile, beginning at its origins in Ethiopia, passing through the site of the Renaissance Dam, to where it meets the White Nile in Sudan and finally into Egypt.

Lake Tana

Lake Tana is the main reservoir of the Blue Nile, providing over 80 percent of the river’s water. It is located 1,788 metres above sea level in the northwestern Ethiopian Highlands. Lake Tana is Ethiopia's largest lake (the third-largest in the Nile Basin) and contains half the country’s fresh water resources. Seven large permanent rivers, as well as about 40 smaller seasonal rivers, feed the lake.

The Renaissance Dam

Ethiopia began construction of the Renaissance Dam in April 2011. The twin-reservoir dam is in the Benishangul-Gumuz region, just 30km from the Sudanese border. Once complete, the primary dam will span an area of 1,780sq kilometres and will store approximately 15 billion cubic metres of water behind its 155 metre-high wall. The second auxiliary dam is a rock and concrete reservoir, measuring 4,800 metres in length and 55 metres in height. It will store approximately 60 billion cubic metres of water and will help divert any excess water from the primary reservoir back along the course of the Nile. The dam has a combined capacity of almost 75 billion cubic metres.

Egypt's Aswan High Dam has more than twice the volumetric capacity of the Renaissance Dam. 
Once complete, the Renaissance Dam will be the second-largest dam in Africa by volume. However, in terms of electricity produced, the Renaissance Dam's 6,450MW rating will easily eclipse the Aswan High Dam's 2,100MW rating, making it the largest hydroelectric power plant on the African continent and among the top 10 in the world. On November 13, 2019, Ethiopia announced that it had completed construction of the auxiliary dam. The main dam is expected to be completed in early 2023 but will begin filling in the summer of 2020. Here is how Ethiopia's Renaissance Dam stacks up against Egypt's Aswan High Dam, as well as a breakdown of how much electricity it is expected to produce.

What Ethiopia wants

The East African country is counting on the Renaissance Dam to meet its growing energy and development needs. The Ethiopian government is planning to build a new commercial network in surrounding areas, which it says will lead to employment opportunities. Once the dam is complete, Ethiopia will become Africa's largest energy exporter, and sell about 2,000MW of surplus electricity from the dam to neighbouring countries. Addis Ababa refuses to acknowledge colonial-era Nile Water Agreements and wants the dam to be filled in three to five years. It believes the 40 billion cubic metres of dam water that Egypt says it needs annually will hinder its ability to fill the dam in time to produce much-needed electricity. Ethiopia is one of the cleanest energy producers on the African continent. 

The triangle capital

The White Nile and the Blue Nile join one another forming a triangle around Sudan's capital city Khartoum. From there, the unified river will flow another 2,500 km before reaching the Mediterranean Sea.

What Sudan wants

Khartoum, like Cairo, is concerned about its share of the Nile's water. Experts believe that the construction of the dam could bring some benefits to the country, most notably regulating the flow of the Nile throughout the year, which could increase agricultural output and prevent devastating flooding. The dam will also block large amounts of silt and tree trunks that obstruct the turbines of Sudan's own hydroelectric dams in the east of the country. However, experts have warned that this reduction of silt will impoverish Sudan's fertile land, making it more difficult for the country to achieve food security.

Egyptian Civilization

For more than 5,000 years, civilisations have thrived along the banks of the Nile. Ancient Egyptians revered the mighty river, calling it a “gift of the gods”. Historians attribute Egypt's social, cultural and political foundations to the river. Today, the Nile still provides 98% of Egypt’s water needs, with about 95% of Egyptians living on its banks.

The High Dam, an expensive solution

Inaugurated in 1971, Egypt’s Aswan Dam is Africa's largest by volume. It produces 2,100MW of hydroelectric power, which accounts for less than 5% of Egypt's total energy production. Scientists have warned that the dam has had a negative environmental and biological impact on the northern part of Egypt’s Delta, including erosion of the coast. Prior to the construction of the dam, the Nile in Egypt contained more than 72 species of widely present fish. Today, less than 25 species remain

What Egypt wants

Egypt wants to ensure that its 55.5 billion cubic-metre share of the Nile is not reduced. Egypt wants Ethiopia to fill the dam over the course of 10 to 21 years and only during the rainy season. Cairo has also demanded that Addis Ababa double the number of water release points in the dam to ensure adequate water flow when water levels are low.

Can Egypt avoid a water crisis?

While there are a handful of solutions available to Egypt, most of them will mean substantial costs to Egypt’s energy, water and food production.  

More dams on the Nile

Over the past 50 years, six Nile Basin countries have built 25 hydroelectric dams. As of 2019, four dams were under construction with four more being studied. The Nile is not just a source of water. It is an exceedingly sensitive ecosystem that plays a role in the environmental and ecological balance of east Africa. The Nile is home to more than 800 species of fish. The diversity of fish stocks is linked to the diversity of birds, insects and microorganisms. The absence of any of these elements will undermine the entire ecosystem. Any disruption to the quality and volume of the water flowing through the river has an impact on the people and wildlife who depend upon it and could trigger a wide-scale extinction.

There are several alternative sources of energy - but there is only one Nile.

Reproduced from:
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2020/saving-the-nile/index.html

The Nile basin and Egypt water vulnerability

The Nile basin presents potential management problems that could become litigious issues between countries. The sources of the White Nile and its tributaries are in the African great lakes region, mainly in Uganda, but also in Kenya,

Rwanda, and Tanzania. The Blue Nile and the Atbara, which are the main eastern tributaries, flow down from the Ethiopian highlands and provide not only a substantial portion of the water volume but also most of the sediment load.

The middle course of the Nile, below the confluence of the White and the Blue tributaries, is in Sudan, and its lower course is in Egypt.

Because the river flows from humid areas (in the south) to increasingly dry areas (in the north), the downstream populations of northern Sudan and Egypt have depended on its water for centuries. In Egypt, where rainfall does not exceed 100 millimetres annually, the Nile is the only source of water. Egypt has a population of almost 100 million,

concentrated chiefly along the banks of the Nile; most Egyptian towns and farms are densely packed in the 40 thousand square kilometres of the Nile’s floodplain.

Any change in the Nile’s regime could be a matter of life and death for the Egyptians. Currently, an international treaty ensures a minimum flow for Egypt at its southern border with Sudan. Sudan does not use its whole share of water; therefore, problems have not arisen yet.

A potential problem relates to the use of groundwater near the river. In northern Sudan and southern Egypt, the river

crosses the Tertiary sedimentary basin of Nubian sandstone, which contains a large and relatively unstudied aquifer.

An important portion of the water recharging this aquifer comes through infiltration from the Nile. Any large-scale use of the aquifer may result in a reduction in flow downstream. It will be difficult to control Sudan’s use of the aquifer, as the relation between groundwater and surface water use has not been firmly established. Recent problems in multiethnic Sudan have prevented its inhabitants from increasing their use of water for irrigation.

Another potential problem for Nile communities is the proposed draining of the Sudd wetlands with the construction of a 360-kilometre canal (the Jonglei Canal) and other related waterworks. The Sudd region of southern Sudan is an area of high biodiversity that not only regulates the flow of the White Nile, reducing the risk of catastrophic floods and droughts, but also provides abundant resources to the Nuer, Dinka, and other peoples who have lived in the area for many generations. The continuing state of war in southern Sudan has forced the project to be abandoned, and it is

unlikely to be completed in the near future.

Similar problems may arise in Ethiopia, where the Blue Nile and the Atbara rivers arise, providing 85% of Egypt’s water. Egyptians are concerned about the possible future construction of dams for power supply or irrigation in the upper basins. Political instability in Ethiopia has made any large-scale hydro development impossible, but this situation may change in the future.

In any case, a new dam was recently built and filled with water. It is the “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam”. It is a gravity dam on the Blue nile River that has been under construction since 2011. It is in the Benishangul-Region of Ethiopia, about 15 km (9 mi) east of the border with Sudan.

At 6.45 gigawatts, the dam will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa when completed, as well as the 7th largest in the world. As of August 2017, the work stood at 60% completion. Once completed, the reservoir could take anywhere between 5 and 15 years to fill with water, depending on hydrologic conditions during the filling period and agreements reached between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.

Another pressing problem of the Ethiopian highlands is the widespread destruction of the forest or shrubby ecosystems in the upper basins. River regimes have become much more extreme, with extended droughts punctuated by periods of increased runoff. Intense erosion of the basin soils has caused a considerable increase in the solids content of the water and silting effects downstream. The Aswan Dam has been particularly affected by increased silting, which has reduced the length of its usefulness to merely a few decades.

The Aswan Dam in upper Egypt was completed in 1970; its inauguration allowed the opening for agriculture of extensive formerly arid lands. Apart from its initial positive impact on agricultural production, however, the dam has had a number of negative effects. One relates to conditions necessary for agriculture on the floodplain downstream

from the dam. Because the dam has reduced the amount of silt reaching the plain, artificial fertilizers are required, increasing costs and affecting the water quality of the river. The newly irrigated soils have also been waterlogged, and salinization of soils and groundwater has become a common problem. Human health was affected by an increase in

schistosomiasis. Construction industries suffered because they depended on a supply of alluvial silt to make bricks.

Brick-makers often compete successfully with farmers for the same land. As a result, traditional farming areas have been reduced along with agricultural production.

The Nile basin is a fragile hydrographic system requiring careful  management. Much coordination will be necessary to ensure that it is used appropriately and sustainably. However, management of such a complex and multinational basin is not merely a scientific endeavour. It encompasses political, social, economic, and historic issues. Only a holistic approach will permit resolution of its long-term problems without conflict and allow its optimum use to improve the quality of life of its population.

Egypt: unsustainability of a nation
Danilo Antón

Egypt is a paradoxical country. It is extremely arid, but of great fertility in its main river valley. It is overpopulated, with more than 95 million inhabitants in just 45,000 km2 of productive land has one of the greatest population densities of the planet in its agricultural and urban areas. At the same time it possesses some of the most desolate and warm deserts in the world that extend for 950,000 km2.
The existence of this enormous human flow is possible for only one reason: a river that is emissary of the humid African tropics and contributes its imposing flow of water and sediments to the arid lands of the North. That is why more than 95% of the Egyptians live in the Nile Valley. 

The rest of the country is sparsely populated. There are few population centers in the coastal strips of the Mediterranean and Red Sea where there are some fishing villages and tourist destinations, and a few oases associated with saline depressions.
In Cairo, the capital of the country, with 25 million inhabitants in the metropolitan area it rains just over 25 mm per year. In Luxor, to the south of the country, which has 500,000 inhabitants, it rains less than 1 mm of rain per year, so that for all practical purposes it can be said that it never rains.

The Nile Valley proper houses almost 90 million inhabitants, 95% of the country's total. This means 2000 inhabitants per km2, one of the highest densities in the world.
The almost unique characteristics of the Nile River were privileged places for the emergence of the first civilizations. They were numerous and close communities that required cooperation to use the water resources of the river to develop their irrigated crops.
At present, however, the agricultural production of the exploitable lands of the country is not enough to supply and provide labor for the large population, giving rise to multitudes of unemployed young people who are unable to enter the labor market.

This social instability is manifested at the political level. Islamic radicalism, expressed by the Muslim Brotherhood and some even more extremist groups, contrasts with the conservative and authoritarian political elite based on the armed forces.
The income that compensates these productive deficits comes from tourism (which is hampered by insecurity in Egyptian cities), repatriation of funds from Egyptian migrants (several million economic emigrants) working in oil countries, contributions and investments of some countries of the Gulf region (eg, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), and US military support.

These contributions are not enough. In the first place, because prevailing corruption prevents resources from being distributed among the general population, secondly because ethnic-religious conflicts (between Muslims and Coptic Christians, between Sunnis and Shiites, etc.) discourage investment and tourism, and thirdly, because environmental degradation (including degradation of agricultural soils) lowers productivity.
In the near future, the situation is not likely to improve, emigrant contributions and contributions from Gulf states are affected by low oil prices, tourism and agricultural production is declining, and population growth continues.
In short, the country's social, environmental and political situation is unsustainable. This will result in greater instability, radicalization of religious extremism, greater violence and insecurity and increased poverty of the great urban and rural majorities.
The incorporation of Egypt into the Saudi-Emirate Alliance in the Yemen War and the blockade of Qatar will not help to resolve the situation, rather it will create new problems.
In the next few years the 100 million Egyptians will enter a difficult and uncertain future of inequality, poverty and social, ethnic and religious conflicts.
From "Lands of little rain and much blood" by Danilo Antón, Piriguazú Ediciones.

A serious water crisis between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan

The Nile river: geopolitical problems

British tourism pioneer Thomas Cook all but invented the Nile cruise in the 1870s when he cornered the market on steamer crossings and proceeded to set up hotels in Luxor and Aswan. One hundred and fifty years later, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has made the global fascination with the mystic river a cornerstone of his campaign to fix Egypt’s economy.

Now he just needs the Nile to cooperate.

In recent years, dropping water levels have repeatedly stranded cruises sailing to Upper Egypt’s archaeological treasures, infuriating tourists and devastating boat owners’ bottom lines. Water scarcity has replaced terrorism as the greatest risk to tour operators’ livelihoods.

“The main threat to the tourism season now is the disruption of navigation in the Nile due to shallow water,” said Ahmed Abdel Ghani, a cruise ship owner whose boat has been docked for the second year in a row.

Water levels hit their nadir during the winter months, at the height of tourism season. Many visitors visit Luxor and Aswan and the archaeological sites along the river’s banks by booking cruises in December and January, Abdel Ghani said, most notably during New Year’s celebrations.

But dropping water levels have made many of those sites inaccessible by boat.

“Sometimes a cruise ship will remain stranded in the river for more than three days before the arrival of rescue units to provide tourists with other means of transportation,” Abdel Ghani noted. “For the tourists, a sudden change of program … is disappointing and frustrating. Nile cruises will bear the brunt of such incidents in the coming tourist seasons.”

All too often, visitors end up missing a large part of their tour program since they are unable to access cities such as Kom Ombo and Arment, which cruise ships now have trouble reaching. As a result, the Nile tours become limited to trips to major archaeological sites such as Luxor and Aswan. Disappointed tourists who had to cut short their tours are unlikely to recommend a Nile cruise to their friends.

Cruise line operators such as Ghani incur multiple losses every time navigation is disrupted. They have to secure alternative land transportation for the disgruntled tourists, and running aground risks major damage to a ship’s hull and engine, with huge maintenance and repair costs.

Abdel Ghani estimates the daily loss for cruise ship owners from a disrupted trip at around $5,000. That’s a big hit for a boat carrying about 100 tourists paying an average of $80 per night for a weeklong or 10-day cruise.

Even hard-fought improvements in the country’s safety reputation risk backfiring.

Egypt launched an ad campaign targeting new markets during last year’s soccer World Cup and recently resumed flights with Russia grounded after a deadly Islamic State bombing in 2015. Across Upper Egypt, Abdel Ghani said, tourism sector workers had been looking forward to the recovery. But now they have their doubts.

“Ahead of this year’s tourist season, intensive preparations started on about 90 cruise ships for the New Year's celebrations, and many tourism programs were launched. A high demand was registered for these tours by international tourism partners and agents. Unfortunately, once again, low water levels hindered navigation and most of these tours risked suspension,” Abdel Ghani said. “The specter of water shortage may cause us more losses than before.”

Cruise ship owners aren’t the only ones who rely on the Nile to deliver a steady stream of tourists. Aswan and Luxor also rely on a busy winter season to sustain hotels, restaurants and local markets that sell souvenirs and traditional products.

The tourism sector water needs represent another challenge for the Egyptian government, which plans to attract 20 million tourists a year by 2020. More tourist facilities means more water consumption in the form of golf courses, swimming pools and industrial lakes in tourist-friendly cities.

The situation has attracted the government’s attention. After some 40 cruises between Luxor and Aswan were affected by navigational restrictions during the 2017-18 winter season, Sisi called a meeting of his tourism and water resources ministers. He pledged to develop an “integrated plan to secure Nile River navigation” including “a routine purge of the river bed by dredges, placing guiding signs and restrictions on cruise owners in order to guarantee the highest possible safety for passengers.”

Ironically, the government’s own policies that prioritize agriculture and drinking water over other uses are part of the problem.

Currently, Egypt’s National Water Resources Management Plan proscribes the release of exceptional quantities of water from Lake Nasser for river navigation. Instead, the minimum daily water release set at 75 million cubic meters (almost 20 billion gallons) is distributed to potable water stations throughout the country, with part of it allocated to agricultural lands.

Ever since the Aswan High Dam went into operation in the 1970s, the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation has followed an annual practice known as the “winter closure,” for 40 days between December and February. During this period when irrigation needs are at their lowest, water is trapped in Lake Nasser and canals are emptied out for maintenance and development. As a result, water levels in the Nile and its branches decrease significantly, causing some usually submerged islands to break the surface.

The policy aims to conserve water for the summer months amid the shortage crisis. But it has created its own set of disruptions, stranding boats, exacerbating water pollution and killing fish.

Los países fronterizos 

Hundreds of miles south of Aswan close to the Blue Nile’s source in northwest Ethiopia, farmer Issa, a farmer in his 20s, is much more upbeat about the river’s future.

Residents of his village of timber and palm-leaf huts have always relied on untreated rainwater and mountain runoff for drinking and bathing water. But construction of Africa's biggest hydroelectric power plant near the border with Sudan has sparked dreams of clean water and reliable energy. Once complete, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD, will flood some 650 square miles of forest, an area about four times the size of Cairo. Ethiopia estimates the dam will generate 6,500 megawatts of electricity and help the country of 110 million people reach middle-income status.

Al-Monitor toured the villages of Bisha, Guba, Teba and Sherkole in the Benishangul-Gumuz region where the dam is located in July 2016. Issa, a farmer whose land was expropriated for the dam project, said he’d heard about job opportunities for local workers and was excited about the prospect of helping build a better future for himself and his community.

A world away in the corridors of power in Addis Ababa, Khartoum and Cairo, diplomats and regional leaders are dealing with a whole different set of concerns as they try to strike a deal on water rights affecting tens of millions of people. Ethiopia's dam aspirations date back to a 1964 feasibility study conducted by the US Bureau of Reclamation, which first identified potential sites. Construction finally began in 2011. Once complete, it will take anywhere from five to 15 years to fill the reservoir of 70 billion cubic meters (18.5 trillion gallons), which is equivalent to the entire annual flow of the Blue Nile at the Sudan border.

The talks are a matter of national security for Egypt, where the vast majority of people live along the banks of the river. Under a 1959 water sharing agreement with Sudan, Egypt is allotted 55.5 billion cubic meters (14.7 trillons gallons) of water annually from the Blue Nile, which accounts for 85% of Egypt's Nile water. (The smaller White Nile tributary joins the Blue Nile in Khartoum.) At the time, Egypt’s population did not exceed 20 million people. Now, that same amount is supposed to meet the water needs of 100 million Egyptians.

Northeastern Africa has been down this path before. During the reign of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1960s, Egypt turned to the Soviet Union to help build the High Dam at Aswan to better control flooding. Furious at being left out of regional negotiations over water quotas, impoverished Ethiopia began eyeing its own dams. Tensions thawed in the early 1990s, leading to a 1993 framework providing that “each party shall refrain from engaging in any activity related to the Nile waters that may cause appreciable harm to the interests of the other party.”

However, the attempted assassination of President Hosni Mubarak by Egyptian Islamists while he was visiting Addis Ababa in 1995 reignited tensions. In 2001, Addis Ababa announced its intention to establish several development projects on the river as part of its national water strategy. Ethiopia also mobilized upstream countries to fight the quota system, signing a pact with five other African nations in 2010 that allows them to conduct projects along the river without Egypt's prior consent. Plans for the GERD itself were confirmed in April 2011.

Over the past eight years, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have held numerous technical, political and security meetings to try to reach a deal that would minimize the dam's impact on the downstream nations' water security. Despite the creation of a trilateral committee in 2012, however, tensions remain high, fueling political instability back in Egypt that has only made it harder to reach a compromise.

The dam was one of the issues that fueled popular anger at Mohammed Morsi during his short stint as Egypt's first democratically elected president. Morsi was hammered in the media after Ethiopia began diverting the flow of Blue Nileto make way for the dam in May 2013. When Sisi was elected president in May 2014, he immediately set about trying to calm the public while also working to improve relations with Ethiopia in an ultimately successful bid to rejoin the African Union (AU), which had suspended Egypt in July 2013 following Morsi's ouster (the AU is based in Addis Ababa).

Under Sisi, Egypt has stressed a diplomatic outcome to the crisis. In 2015, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan signed a Declaration of Principles on the GERD, despite the advice of legal experts who argued against joining a document that allowed Ethiopia to strengthen its legal and international position while not explicitly providing for the respect and protection of Egypt's annual Nile water quota. “Ethiopia accomplished its mission when it signed a declaration of principles that gave it sovereignty [over its land and natural resources],” Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom told the Ethiopian parliament following a round of negotiations between Addis Ababa and Cairo in 2015. “Egypt,” he added, “did not mention its historical rights of the Nile waters in this declaration.”

Since then, Egyptian frustration with Ethiopia has swelled. Four years since the declaration was signed, none of its 10 clauses — including a requirement to conduct comprehensive technical studies to test the dam's impacts on Egypt and Sudan — have been carried out. Ethiopia even rejected Egypt's demand to delay filling the dam reservoir until the end of the negotiations. The situation remains unchanged even as Egypt's political and security apparatus has taken over from the technical experts, leading to the intervention of the heads of the general intelligence services as a main party in official negotiations for the first time in April 2018.

Back in the Nile Delta, Faqi describes the water shortage as an “epidemic” that is slowly killing Egypt’s millennia-old agricultural tradition. “Our children have left the land and most farmers have sold their property to look for other sources of income,” he said. “If the water shortage continues, there won’t be any agricultural lands left.”

Ayah Aman

Reference:

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/05/dry-nile-river-egypt.html?utm_campaign=20190523&utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily%20Newsletter

The dryness of the Nile (2)

Egyptian civilization emerged more than 5,000 years ago as heavy summer rains in the highlands of East Africa carried vast amounts of high-quality silt to the lower reaches of the Nile. The resulting soil proved particularly fertile, giving birth to a lush green ribbon that snakes through some of the world's driest lands. In a country that receives less than 8 inches of rain along the coast — and almost none at all south of Cairo — the Nile continues to fulfill 90% of Egypt's water needs.

But surging population growth along the Nile compounded by the devastating impact of climate change threatens disaster as more and more people compete for a dwindling resource. Today, Egypt faces an annual water deficit of more than 20 billion cubic meters (5.3 trillion gallons). That's the difference between the amount of water that people, crops and industry need and what’s available from the Nile in addition to limited quantities of groundwater, treated wastewater and desalinated water.

For millennia, the Nile Delta between Cairo and the Mediterranean Sea has been marked by intensive agricultural use. Today, about 86% of Nile water that flows to Egypt is still used to grow food, with the $28 billion agricultural sector accounting for about 12% of the economy. Agriculture is also the cornerstone of food security, as the government relies on its domestic production to avoid overdependence on foreign sources. In a telling sign of the vital national interests at stake, Egypt transferred responsibility for Nile disputes with its African neighbors from the Water and Foreign Affairs ministries into the hands of Egypt's intelligence and security chief in 2010.

Despite being a national priority, the agricultural sector is one of the hardest-hit victims as Egypt runs out of water. Since 1991, employment in the agricultural sector has dropped from 44% to less than 27%, in part due to farmers abandoning their unprofitable lands to look for work elsewhere.

The country's failure to feed its people has transformed the former breadbasket of the Roman Empire into the world's largest wheat importers: The country imported 12.5 million metric tons (13.8 million US tons) of wheat and flour from April 2018 to April 2019 — 50% more than it produced — according to the Foreign Ägricultural Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). To make matters worse, farmers are increasingly growing crops in the desert as the country loses fertile land to urbanization. The government is looking at ways to avoid catastrophe, including by encouraging the use of less wasteful but more expensive pressurized irrigation methods, such as drip and sprinkler systems, which account for a little more than 10% of irrigated lands in Egypt (versus 58%-65% in the United States). At the same time, however, government policies also encourage the production of water-intensive cash crops, notablyt cotton.

Faqi’s parched fields are a case study of all that is going wrong as the Nile dries up. His village of al-Hamoul lies in the governorate of Kafr el-Sheikh, the largest rural tract in Egypt’s agricultural heartland. The governorate’s 275,000 cultivated acres have long produced an abundance of field crops and grains, along with fruits and vegetables as well as livestock — a cornucopia made possible by a complex network of canals and pumping stations stretching more than 500 miles from Lake Nasser to the Nile Delta. But the miracle of irrigation is just as often a source of misery for farmers at the end of the line.

“At the beginning of the agricultural season, we sow our seeds and hope to get a suitable share of water or no water rationing,” Faqi said. “Sometimes we try to delay cultivation to reduce pressure on water demand, or to cultivate the land repeatedly. But these solutions are temporary and useless most of the time.”

Without irrigation, desperate farmers are turning to other sources of water, including tapping aquifers and other sources of underground water whose salinity can damage the soil. Others are reusing agricultural drainage water by using small diesel pumps to lift water from ditches and return it to irrigation canals for reuse, increasing the available water supply but potentially contaminating the irrigation network with polluted water.

Damage to the irrigation network was evident on a tour of al-Hamoul last fall. Most canals were almost completely dry, and irrigation machines lay dormant. Idle farmers threatened to turn on one another.

“Sometimes,” Faqi noted, “we fight and argue with the owners of lands that overlook the same irrigation source to take turns in irrigating the lands.”

The government is well aware of the impact on farmers.

“We are distributing the available water to lands,” Ashraf Mohammadi, the undersecretary of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation in Kafr el-Sheikh, told Al-Monitor. “It is like using one cup of water to hydrate dozens of people.”

“We have reached a point where the available water quantities set the limits for economic development. We have become one of the driest countries in the world.”

In a bid to address the water deficit, the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation recently initiated a set of austerity measures. The 20-year plan aims to rationalize consumption, encourage water reuse and increase the use of desalinated water in coastal cities.

“Reused agricultural drainage water has become an integral part of the water balance in Egypt,” Mohammadi said, “given the impossibility of relying solely on Egypt’s quota of Nile water.”

The ministry has also taken more drastic measures, including ordering farmers to curtail the production of high-yielding but water-intensive cash crops. In January 2018, the area allotted to rice cultivation was reduced from 1.1 million acres to 750,000 acres, devastating the livelihood of Nile Delta families. As a result, the USDA's Cairo bureau forecast rice production to drop to 3.3 million metric tons (3.6 million US tons) in the 12 months through September 2019, down 1 million metric ton (1.1 million US tons) from the 2017-18 estimate.

“The decision deprived me of growing rice this season, and not enough water rations were provided to grow other crops,” Faqi said. “The government decided not to allow us to grow rice, without giving us any instructions regarding other crops we can rely on to preserve land fertility. Many acres turned into fallow lands, and rice cultivation in the governorate is now history.”

The impact of dropping water levels can be felt far beyond the Nile Delta. In the Faiyoum oasis village of al-Gomhouria, 150 miles to the south, large cracks scar the dry earth as thirsty crops wither in the sun.

“The village’s agricultural lands barely produce enough to cover our consumption needs,” Shaaban Abdul Rahman, a farmer in his early 40s, told Al-Monitor on a recent visit. “We had warehouses for all kinds of grains grown in our land, and now we have to travel to nearby centers to buy our food needs.”

Abdul Rahman recalled when his father received a 3-acre plot as part of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s land reforms of the 1950s. At the time, he said, farming met the needs of the whole family. But recent water woes are leaving him no choice but to join the growing rural exodus in hopes of finding a doorman job in the city.

“I have no other option but to move to Cairo,” Abdul Rahman said, “until the state finds a solution to the water crisis and life returns to our lands.”

 
Reference: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/05/dry-nile-river-egypt.html#ixzz5omX7MZu1