If countries sharing international rivers basins are not willing to develop and make use of their common water resources in a cooperative and equitable manner, the potential for skirmish over water will keep mounting, disclosed Tigistu Awelu, a politician, and scholar of Middle East Studies.
With a view to thwarting the occurrence of conflicts in the midst of the states and peoples sharing common waters resources, actors need to attain much more understanding of hydro-politics.
Furthermore, interdependencies among riparian states and the costs of noncompliance make cooperation inescapable.
According to him, there is no gainsaying the fact that phrases like ‘equitable distribution, ‘fair allocation of water’, ‘water sharing agreement’ and whatnot have sounded ridiculous for Egyptians’.
After the US sponsored Camp David Accord in 1979 the hydro-political stances in the basin have clearly helped Egypt, in effect.
Nothing demonstrates this state of affairs better than the unceasing threats of war and conflict-laden statements uttered frequently by Egyptian leaders and politicians.
“The grandiloquence, unbending stand and sureness of the Egyptians is born out of a wide spectrum of perceptions like that of Ethiopia, as a poor country, could not generate financial resources internally to undertake hydraulic works, he added.
In the past, Egyptians have made an effort to wedge the international institutions’ from financing of the projects in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Herald April 24/2020
BY ADDISALEM MULAT
