The issue of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has been a debatable issue for the past eight years. Now, it seemed that the deal reaches its climax. As latest information gained from the Ministry of Water, Irrigation, and Energy indicated, the final tripartite meeting is expected to be held this week in Washington. The meeting will be attended by the United States Secretary of the Treasury and the President of the World Bank as observers.
In his tweet posted on Tuesday, Dr. Seleshi Bekele said: “I arrived in Washington DC to review results so far by the legal and technical teams of Ethiopia negotiating with Egypt and Sudan on GERD.”
“Number of articles and issues are not yet resolved and negotiation continues as of Wednesday. We, the Ethiopian team, continue to work vigilantly in advancing our national interest.” he added.
Considering the various information of the media are creating confusion among the people of Ethiopia, the Institute for Strategic Affairs (ISA) has organized a seminar last Thursday on the ongoing process of GERD deal. Including the Minister, members of the Ethiopian National Panel of Experts and the GERD negotiation team; Eng.
Gedion Asfaw, Eng. Kifle Horo and Tefera Beyene have attended the seminar, and experts briefed the audience about the ongoing tripartite negotiations over the GERD and current status of the dam and they downplayed fake news circulated and disseminated on social media claiming that the agreement Ethiopia has been entering harms the national interest of the country.
According to Dr. Seleshi, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan are dealing with four distinct binding documents regarding the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
In principle, he said, Ethiopia is committed to equitable and fair utilization of the Nile waters and does not opt to cause significant harm to the downstream countries.
Taking into account the enormous benefit GERD bestows on the region, “I think we are coming up with the best solutions,” Selashi said adding that apart from enhancing Ethiopia’s energy production, fishery development, and tourism sector, GERD will also benefit downstream countries the generation of hydropower dams and development runoff river plants.
The first, annex 1, is a technical document that is more or less done sorting out our differences. However, minor issues remain to be resolved. The remaining three items have to do with legal provisions, issues related to a peaceful settlement of the differences, coordination mechanisms and data exchange, he added. The three countries’ legal teams have been dealing with these issues and working together in Washington.”
The stages of filling the dam is expected to be conducted in accordance with the agreement that determines the release of the water-based upon the hydro-logical conditions and the level of GERD during prolonged periods of dry seasons, drought and prolonged drought.
Indicating that Ethiopia is committed to signing the documents, he reiterated the country will not sign each document separately. Rather, it will sign the comprehensive document once everything is settled.
This will be done after making sure that the documents don’t contradict each other. “The comprehensive document should be crystal clear, understandable for all of us and not open space for misinterpretations.”
According to him, the number of turbines is reduced from 16 to 13, and GERD will produce 5,150 MW. This will help the country save about 210 million USD. The negotiations are being held on the principle of equitable and reasonable utilization. The negotiation would not compromise Ethiopia’s sustainable water interest on Nile water.
On 15 January, the US Treasury Department announced that ministers of foreign affairs and water resources of the three countries had reached a consensus on principles. After three days of intensive negotiations in Washington the ministers reaffirmed “their joint commitment to reach a comprehensive, cooperative, adaptive, sustainable, and mutually beneficial agreement on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam”.
According to the joint statement, “they also discussed and agreed to finalize a mechanism for the annual and long-term operation of the GERD in normal hydrological conditions, a coordination mechanism, and provisions for the resolution of disputes and the sharing of information. Moreover, they also agreed to address dam safety and pending studies on the environmental and social impacts of the GERD”.
According to the statement issued by the Ethiopian team, the dam will be filled in two stages. Accordingly, the first stage of dam filling will be completed in two years, thereby; the dam is expected to hold 18.5 billion cubic meters of water. In other words, this means achieving water filling of the dam up to the height of 595 meters. In fact, the floor of the dam, in general, rests on 500 meters above sea level and during the first round of filling, the water level will rise from 500 to 595 meters in space of two years.
The dam will be able to hold 4.5 billion cubic meters of water by the end of the next wet season until September. This level will be adequate to generate electricity using the first two turbines.
Furthermore, the rest 14 billion cubic meters is also expected to be achieved in the two years to attain the target 18.5 billion cubic meters of water. Now, the 18.5 billion cubic meters will be adequate to test the remaining 9 turbines on GERD but not generate electricity. In fact, the remaining turbines would have to wait for the second round of filling and start generating electricity.
The second round of the filling process is said to see water levels rise on the dam up to the height of 640 meters, expected to be achieved in five years and the dam will slowly hold the water it needs.
The great point of the deal with downstream countries was agreeing on a common definition on terms such as worst drought conditions. This refers to various conditions in which the dam is filled, and various climatic eventualities that might arise during the filling process.
In accordance with climatic conditions, the filling of the dam should be regulated in such a way that under conditions of drought and severe drought, the level of water can be retained and goes to the filling of the dam has to take into consideration the water need of downstream nations such as Egypt.
In general, the water volume below 37 billion cubic meters is considered to the drought threshold level for the second round of the filling process. Threshold means that level at which the GERD operation has to start consider strict management of the water it holds vis-a-vis the release to downstream countries.
Dr. Selashi said that it is not until 31 billion cubic meters that Ethiopia has to actually stop hold water and just let water pass to downstream areas; this, of course, is not without generating electricity. The water release process don’t necessarily infringe upon electricity generation.
The conditions of drought agreed up in January meeting gives better consideration to Ethiopia dam filling timetable during the first round of the filling stage. That is in the first round, the overall drought threshold moves down to 31 and the point where water retention stops down to 29 billion cubic meters.
According to the minster, based on the climatic history of Ethiopia, the drought condition defined as severe drought (29 billion cubic meters) is so rare that it has happened twice in the past 129 years. Sileshi also noted that, under the normal conditions, some 49 billion cubic meters of water enters to the GERD dam, significantly larger than the defined.
The Ethiopian Herald February 13/2020
BY GIRMACHEW GASHAW
