In a recent article by Foreign Policy, Egypt’s Ambassador to Washington, Motaz Zahran, claims filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) without an agreement would result in a major crisis that will drive social and economic instability in his country. This is the same rhetoric that we heard last year and found to be nowhere near to reality as Egypt’s High Aswan Dam continues to be the highest it has been in modern times.
The tripartite negotiation among Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan that has been going on and off for many years is now at a stage that being pushed to the public with all kinds of pretext that has nothing to do with water shortage in the Nile Basin or the supposed negative impact of GERD on downstream countries.
Why has getting an agreement among the three countries been difficult?
At the core of the disagreement is a water allocation issue that is bundled in GERD negotiation. As a country that produces 86 percent of the total Nile flow, Ethiopia says its share should be something more than 0 percent and vehemently opposes a water allocation scheme being pushed by Egypt and Sudan using a single project.
The 1959 colonial agreement that completely disregards any of the upper riparian states and allocates all 100 percent of the water to just Egypt and Sudan is being pushed relentlessly on Ethiopia in these ongoing GERD negotiations. Different covers are being used including “drought release”, “prolonged drought”, “historical right”, etc., plus what the two downstream countries call their must haves: “binding agreement” on those releases. Binding Ethiopia to 0 percent allocation today and in the future would force Ethiopia to be responsible for any climate change or any upstream water use change. This will deny the country any consumptive use including basic water supply for its people.
More than 66 million of Ethiopians (about 59 percent of its population) lack basic access to water according to the World Bank. This colonial agreement is so bad that even Sudanese scholars do not agree with it. Dr. Salman M. Salman, a former Sudanese world bank legal Lead Council called it “the worst agreement Khartoum could have signed”. Many independent experts see the problem with this agreement starting from its title “…full utilization of the Nile.” This is at the expense of the rest of the Nile basin countries who are responsible for the “full” supply of the Nile water; even more so at the expense of Ethiopia who generates 86 percent of the total Nile flow.
Egypt is trying to impose this unfair, unsustainable water allocation by any means including threatening to use “all options” and declaring “no one can take a drop of water from Egypt”. GERD, a single project, on a single basin is used as an instrument to enforce this colonial agreement and deny Ethiopia’s right to use its own water resources to lift its people from darkness. Most Americans remember what it means a few days of electric failure this winter with what happened in Texas and neighboring states. Imagine 65 million people (almost the combined population of Texas and California) living in a constant state of darkness.
Playing the drought card
Contrary to hydrologic science and data on the ground, Egypt has portrayed itself and created a media persona as a country that is pretty much in drought every other year. If one asks when that country was in drought the last time, one will have to go to the 1980s even to find something slightly close to drought and much of it was avoided by storage they had at High Aswan Dam. On the other hand, the 1980s are when Ethiopia got the worst of it and was a poster child of feminine because of nonexistent water storage capacity in the country.
When GERD negotiation started, Egypt defined a hydrological drought to be any Blue Nile flow that is below the historical median. We are not aware of this kind of arbitrary, science-defying drought definition in either peer reviewed journal articles or in any credible hydrologic textbooks. By their nature, drought and floods are extremes that should not be defined using central tendency statistics such as median. It appears to us this is a definition of drought created with a sole purpose of forcing Ethiopia to deliver forever an average flow of 49 billion cubic meter to downstream countries, leaving it 0 percent for the country that produces 100 percent of the Blue Nile flow.
Contrary to the public drought persona Egypt has portrayed for the last several years, research shows Egypt has a flooding issue more than drought. A simple Google trend search will show on average there are 20 million more flooding issues than drought as related to Egypt in the past five years, for example. This is supported by the continued rise of High Aswan Dam (HAD) storage over the last 20-years and the ever increasing shallow groundwater level that would not allow even a moderate rainstorm to seep into the ground, resulting in flooding in major cities.
Even with significant diversion to Toshka projects, significant agricultural land reclamation projects and expansion using billions of Nile water, HAD has been sitting at a 20 year high for the last two years. In fact, as recently as last month (April 2021 is the most recent satellite data available), the level of HAD for April is the highest it has been in 30 years! Just a year ago, Egypt was saying that Ethiopia’s filling without agreement would result in the loss of 50 percent of agricultural lands, if done in five years or 33 percent loss of agricultural land, if done in seven years. We now know that Ethiopia stored 4.9 BCM last year and Egypt continues to hold record water levels in its massive reservoir.
Ambassador Zahran also claims in his article that unilateral filling of GERD could lead to a water shortage in Egypt of more than 123 billion cubic meter and that for every billion cubic meter shortage, it would result in 290,000 people losing their job, destruction of 321K acres of cultivated land, 150 million USD in food imports, and 430 million USD loss of agricultural production. That is an estimated 36 million jobs lost! This is not only a blatant scare tactic but “these estimates seem exaggerated” as appropriately called out by their own scholars’ assessment. It is important to note that on average the Nile river flow goes up or down by 17 billion cubic meters, much more than what Ethiopia plans to hold this year, 13.5.
Despite the claim of this much damage with one billion cubic meter, Egypt’s own inefficient water use is very well documented by their own academics. Only agricultural improvement could save the country as much as 16 billion cubic meter. Estimated loss from finished water by their own account is at least three billion cubic meters in 2019. It appears to us rather than cooperatively working with other basin countries and improve efficiency on the use of limited resources, Egypt has decided to push for exclusive use of the Nile water through what their experts called it “circuit breaker” on other countries like Ethiopia: restrict Nile water use by upstream countries to zero percent and force the colonial era agreement for which Ethiopia is not even a party.
Share the water, share the drought!
One of the major contended points in the negotiations between Egypt and Ethiopia is the priority of dam filling between the High Aswan Dam (HAD) and the GERD after an extended drought. Egypt insists the task of water supply during periods of drought and its management be solely on Ethiopia. There is no single international precedent on a transboundary river one could cite that requires an upper riparian state which generates 86 percent of the total flow to have 0 percent share and be forced to be a drought mitigation instrument.
International examples tell us water and drought sharing is what is sustainable like that of the Colorado River basin. The Colorado River is shared by both upper and lower basin states in the US and Mexico. Not only did they share the water, but they also agreed to share the drought. For example, the 2019 agreement among the US states and Mexico (Minute 319) stipulates drought sharing mechanism through a cut from their pre-allocated share, if Lake Mead level reaches 1075 feet (currently at 1084 feet). In fact, for the first time in the basin’s history, we could be seeing this drought sharing through cuts from that of Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico this summer.
Cooperative outlook
GERD’s benefit for both Sudan and Egypt is well documented. For Sudan, flood control alone would be a game changer. Who would forget last year’s devastating flood that killed more than hundred people and left 500,000 more homeless? At the time, Sudan’s Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas couldn’t have said it better: “If the GERD was complete, Khartoum would not have suffered such a wave of floods.” A highly circulated recent study by Sudanese researchers estimates annual increase of 1 to 2 billion USD in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the next 40 years. This is based only on increased electricity generation and agricultural production expansion because of regulated year-round GERD release that Sudan will enjoy. Of note in this estimate is a benefit for rural Sudanese households of between 21 –37 billion USD.
For Egypt, extra storage in a cooler Ethiopian highland helps the country meet its demand at times of drought. When GERD is filled, along with the High Aswan Dam, the two will combine for the largest over year storage in a single river basin in the world. Given the expected warming of climate in the future, water storage at cooler altitude will benefit everyone. Even at current temperature, the estimated evaporation loss at HAD last year was 16 billion cubic meters.
This is expected to significantly increase in a warm future climate. In addition to warming, if the Eastern Nile basin were to effectively adapt to climate change, changes in rainfall variability and the ensuing variable river flow would dictate building additional water storage in the Ethiopian highlands beyond GERD. A 2017 Nature study by Egyptian and Sudanese scholars put this needed additional storage to be at least twice that of GERD.
Given current excellent hydrologic conditions, with observed rainfall at 200 percent to 400 percent above normal in the Blue Nile basin in the last month accompanied by great upcoming summer outlook, GERD filling this summer will have no significant impact to downstream countries. If anything, it will help Sudan from flooding like those witnessed last year. This should encourage the parties to get to a first filling agreement relatively easy.
There are many independent experts including the European Union (EU) that found it problematic to push for a “binding agreement” for the GERD’s operation as Egypt and Sudan are insisting without addressing the underlying water allocation issue. For example, the EU while supporting the African Union’s (AU’s) leadership notes the first filling can be addressed to everyone’s satisfaction and adds “the operations after the filling need further discussions to reach a water sharing arrangement, as occurs in all river basins.” Reaching a first filling agreement will also help these countries build confidence and take on the more challenging task of water allocation in the Nile basin next. Accepting the basic premise that both upper and lower riparian states have the right to utilize the water of the Nile is a necessary condition. It will allow creative technical solutions which will figure out how and when.
BY WEASPIRE EDITORIAL BOARD
The Ethiopian Herald June 2/2021
