BY HAFTU GEBREZGABIHER
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) offers a comparative advantage to most of the wildlife, specifically the fish and reptiles in the Abay river since the surface area occupied by water will increase and limnological properties of the water in the dam will improve leading to the proliferation of the primary producers and invertebrates on which the fish will feed, according to studies.
The Abay basin covers two-third of Ethiopia’s surface water and contributes 86 percent of the water to the river Nile. While Ethiopia is constructing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Abay River based on its legitimate sovereign right, Ethiopia has been demonstrating its commitment to foster cooperation and attain a win-win outcome with its co-riparian countries.
However, the overarching impediment regarding the utilization of the waters of the Abay River is an attempt by Egypt to maintain unjust colonial and post-colonial bilateral treaties between Egypt and Sudan to which Ethiopia is not a party.
From the ecological point of view, the GERD offers various advantages to the environment beyond its power production. According to the Forest, Environment and Climate Change Commission, the GERD is expected to create a water reservoir twice the size of the largest natural lake in Ethiopia, Lake Tana, it is researched that it will have a huge potential ecosystem and biodiversity enhancement.
The surrounding ecosystem will enhance forest development, an eco-friendly fishery farm and tourism development are the comparative advantages of the GERD, Teshome Tamrat (PhD), Forest Development Expert with the Commission told The Ethiopia Herald recently.
He further stated that the GERD project will harness the micro and macro climatic change, water transport services, ecotourism development and related biodiversity benefits.
The other most important benefit that GERD will bring to the investors is it would be very much for water bottling packaging businesses.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in its approach deployed to illustrate the nexus between Transboundary Rivers applies those ecosystems as ‘the central component of the energy-water-food-ecosystem interconnection.
Furthermore, projects’ sustainability as defined by several scholars is the harmonious interaction between the elements of systems by focusing on three aspects: social, ecological and economic. Therefore, sustainability should be the state of simultaneous achievement of economic prosperity, a healthy environment, and social equity for current and future generations. On the other hand, system theory suggests that “ecological, social, and economic systems are a group of interrelated, interacting or interdependent constituents forming a complex whole.
Bisrat Woldemichael, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden stated at his publication on the integration and linkage between sectors, such as energy, water, food or land and ecosystem services shows opportunities to integrate and coordinate the systems with each other.
Moreover, he emphasized that transboundary water resources like that of Abay (Nile river), have the potential of addressing the role of each sector’s share and contribution within a system that the hydropower sectors integration has a significant role to enhance the natural resource efficiency and to promote sustainability of the projects as well. Nevertheless, without institutional integration, it is difficult to apply the nexus sectors interaction approach to sustainability, because one sector or/and institution affects the other.
Furthermore, hydropower facilities cover a broad range of technologies and operational regimes that generate electricity from the water. Nevertheless, the size of these facilities can vary greatly, from those with electricity generation capacity as small as kilowatts to as large as gigawatts (GW), which depends on the technologies range and operational considerations. However, there has not been a universally or widely accepted model and theory that applies the hydropower nexus integration for multipurpose.
The GERD obtaining water from the Blue Nile River and its tributaries sources, then supplying the obtained water for different purposes of each sector what they demand their providing services. Moreover, the nexus sectors linkages are dependent on the responsibilities of institutional cooperation at the local level. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) at the local level in Ethiopia, GERD connect with energy and the reservoir would have been, food or agricultural land and irrigation. In this regard, each institution should assign a sub-department for taking their responsibility. The institutional cooperation and sectoral linkages are promising for minimizing the GERD Energy, Food/Land, Ecosystem Services, Water to enhancing the project efficiency, promoting sustainability and natural resource management effectively.
Also, the Ministry of Water, irrigation and electricity; the Ministry of Agriculture, Environment, Forest and Climate Change Commission, as well as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism must collaborate.
The Ethiopian Herald April 2/2021
