The International Court of Justice (ICJ) takes an expansionist view towards decolonisation as seen in the Chagos Islands Advisory Opinion, in which it allowed the decolonisation agenda to trump the UKs lack of consent to any contentious proceedings. Owned and operated by the Ethiopian Electric Power company, the 145-m-tall roller-compacted concrete gravity dam . Egypts original goal was to have the project purely and simply cancelled. The Political Deadlock on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Therefore, all the water is eventually released downstream with the effect that there is no net loss of water to downstream states. In response, Ethiopia threatened military force to defend the dam and protect its interests (The New Arab, 2020a). Since 2015, technical reports on the potential impacts of the dam have failed to reach a consensus within the TNC (Maguid, 2017). The Politics Of The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam - Analysis The late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who laid the foundation stone in 2011, said the dam would be built without begging for money . IDS (2013). Alaa al-Zawahiri, a member of the Egyptian National Panel of Experts studying the effects of the Renaissance Dam, believes as much. This is because it is traditionally understood to refer to waterways that form intrinsic parts of international boundaries. Ethiopia has never 'consumed' significant shares of the Niles water so far, as its previous political and economic fragility in combination with a lack of external financial support, due to persistent Egyptian opposition to projects upstream, prevented it from implementing large-scale projects. [18] Political instability in Egypt played an important role as the announcement of the project coincided with the resignation of President Mubarak during the Arab Spring. There are three key articles. - Ethiopia's massive. Egypt, fearing major disruptions to its access to the Niles waters, originally intended to prevent even the start of the GERDs construction. Neither the Egyptian nor the Ethiopian governments received positive domestic feedback on their agreement. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Search for jobs related to Disadvantages of the grand ethiopian renaissance dam or hire on the world's largest freelancing marketplace with 22m+ jobs. These parallel developments appear to be elements of a bigger hydro-political strategy wherein the riparian countries aim to increase their water utilisation to put facts on the ground (and underpin legal claims based on those uses) and increase their bargaining position for renegotiations of volumetric water allocations. However, Ethiopia ultimately refused to sign the draft agreement. It too has legal arguments it could adduce in support of its position that the Dam is permitted under international law. Ethiopia and Egypt Are Fighting Over the Nile River. The United States One question that keeps coming up is: Will Ethiopia be willing to release enough water from the reservoir to help mitigate a drought downstream? The Gerd is expected to generate over 5,000 megawatts of electricity, doubling the nation's . To date, no significant harm has been caused to Egypt or Sudan as a result of the ongoing construction of the GERD. Ethiopia seems to have the legal upper hand in this dispute. The Eastern Nile Basin is of critical geopolitical importance to the Niles overall hydro-political regime. For example, in 2017, the UNSC highlighted the security risks of water stress in the Lake Chad Basin Region, affecting Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, based on a combination of water scarcity, drought, desertification and land degradation. Indeed, Egypt has called the filling of the dam an. grand ethiopian renaissance dam. The final touches to these plans were added in 2005 and 2007, and one involves nine hydroelectric dams along the Gebale Dawa to produce some 1,300 MW of electricity for export. Ethiopia rejects Arab League resolution on Renaissance Dam The 1959 agreement allocated all the Nile Rivers waters to Egypt and Sudan, leaving 10 billion cubic meters (b.c.m.) However, another trend stresses the need to approach the question from a broader and more holistic perspective. Here, for the first time, Egypt recognised Ethiopias right to use the Nile for development purposes. Solar and wind power could break the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam It can be demand-driven, typically caused by population growth, and supply-driven, typically caused by decreasing amounts of fresh water often resulting from climate change or a result of societal factors such as poverty. Created by. for seepage and evaporation, but afforded no water to Ethiopia or other upstream riparian statesthe sources of most of the water that flows into the Nile. They generate electricity, store water for crop irrigation and help to prevent floods. The Washington Quarterly, 37(2), 25-37. A major reason the GERD is so controversial today is that it has not been subjected to thorough safety and impact studies, which could pose a grave threat to downriver nations. But with a generation capacity of 6.45GW, the Ethiopian government quoted the project as vital to the country's economic growth. These run from rising rivalry between Egypt and Ethiopia to a festering border war between Ethiopia and neighboring Sudan. 1800m long and 170m high. In its 2013 report, the International Rivers Organisation predicted that the long-term effects of the Gibe III Dam would turn Lake Turkana into another Aral Sea. Such an understanding and appreciation of Egypts water vulnerability would help the riparians develop a water management protocol that can significantly enhance equitable and reasonable use while minimizing significant harm to downstream riparians. Disputes over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) However, this threatens the basin's long-term sustainability (as water use expands beyond what is environmentally feasible) and suboptimal in terms of capital allocation (as higher water use upstream may make downstream projects uneconomical (Swain, 2011). That seems unlikely given that the DoP concerns the Dam alone and was agreed only between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan; whereas the Nile Waters Treaties concern the whole Nile Basin and involve many more states. The dam will flood 1,680 square kilometers of forest in northwest Ethiopia (an area about four times the size of Cairo), displace approximately 20,000 people in Ethiopia, and create a reservoir that will hold around 70 billion cubic . However, for the reasons given above, the Nile Waters Treaties are unlikely to be considered territorial treaties. The results indicated that the negative impacts on Egyptian water resources are dominant. The filling regime and operational methods of GERD will affect Egypt, in particular through its impact on the operation of its Aswan High Dam (AHD) which aims at mitigating the high variability of the Nile River flow. Furthermore, resolving conflicts involving the Nile River is most likely to be more successful through improvements in relations between the riparians and not through external intervention. Ethiopia: The Untold Story of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Sudans agricultural and hydropower interests align with those of Ethiopia while it has a strong interest in not alienating its 'big brother' and northern neighbour, Egypt, with whom it shares a long and partly contested border (Whittington et al., 2014). Given the importance of water to Ethiopian agriculture, it resulted in the tragic irony that, as Thurow put it, the land than feeds the Nile is unable to feed itself. The status quo started to change when Ethiopia began construction of the Dam, just east of its border with Sudan, in 2011. (2012). Yet, Ethiopia is fully aware of Somalias economic dependence on the rivers originating from Ethiopias highlands. Why the Nile could see a 'water war'. Elliot Winter is a lecturer (assistant professor) in international law at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. While the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is taking shape on . A Grand New Dam on the Nile - NASA From this round of talks, it appears that negotiations are able to move forward and address other sticking points on the agenda, such as conflict resolution mechanisms and the dams operations in the event of multi-year droughts (Al Jazeera, 2020). As mentioned above, Ethiopias dam-construction strategy is intimately linked with large-scale foreign investment in the agrarian sector and specifically in areas near the artificial reservoirs created by the dams. Ethiopian Renaissance Dam & Its implications on Egypt Kandeel, A. Even then, the initial studies did not extend beyond the borders with Kenya. But this did not rule out eruptions of tension, not just between local communities and the central government, but also between Ethiopia and its neighbours. Turning then to Ethiopia. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Ethiopian Challenge of The Blue Nile is Ethiopias largest river, with high potential for hydropower and irrigation. For a decade, Egypt and Ethiopia have been at a diplomatic stalemate over the Nile's management. All three countries have a vested interest in a properly operated dam. Although the immediate issue at stakesecuring a technical agreement on the filling of the GERDs reservoiris among Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, the broader and longer-term goal should be for all 11 statesincluding Tanzania, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Eritrea, and South Sudanto agree on a legal regime for the management of this important watercourse. The dispute over the GERD is part of a long-standing feud between Egypt and Sudanthe downstream stateson the one hand, and Ethiopia and the upstream riparians on the other over access to the Niles waters, which are considered a lifeline for millions of people living in Egypt and Sudan. Egypt's 100 million people rely on the Nile for 90% of the country's water needs. River Nile dam: Why Ethiopia can't stop it being filled This article quantifies the major benefits of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Project for Sudan and Egypt based on GERDP technical design and quantitative analysis. General view of the talks on Hidase Dam, built on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia, between Sudan and Egypt in Khartoum, Sudan on October 04, 2019. Al Jazeera (2020). Further, it means that this figure should be used to assess the impact of the Dam on the Egyptian economy for the purposes of calculating compensation resulting from loss of flow. At that point, the lake that . For nearly a century, as a legacy of colonialism, Egypt enjoyed what Tekuya referred to as a hydro-hegemony over the Nile; despite Ethiopia contributing 86% to its waters. Benefits from the Nile's Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam - Rural 21 2. But controversy has surrounded the project ever since it was announced in 2011 especially concerning its . Ethiopia is pinning its hopes of economic development and power generation on the Blue Nile dam, which Egypt fears will imperil its water supply. Given the fact that the conflict between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan over the GERD seems to be among the most pressing issues in the region, it might be advisable for emphasis to be placed on securing a trilateral agreement that secures the peace between these three countries first. The controversy over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam - Brookings (PDF) Benefit of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Project (GERDP) for Egypt has taken various efforts in a bid to secure its water security in the context of the Nile River. Helping Egypts cause, during the preparation of the VCSS, the International Law Commission stated that treaties concerning water rights or navigation on rivers are commonly regarded as candidates for inclusion in the category of territorial treaties. However, it must be noted that this would represent a generous interpretation of the territorial treaty exception. However, as a result of the ability and willingness of Ethiopians at home and abroad to invest in the dam project, the government was able to raise a significant portion of the money needed to start the construction of the GERD. Could the Nile dispute be an opportunity to boost freshwater technology? An optimistic trend among todays African commentators focuses primarily on economic growth rates and pays little attention to human tolls, questions of transparency and accountability, and the sustainability of growth. Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in Africa, has the second largest population in the continent. Egypts main argument might be that, despite being unsatisfactory and anachronistic, the Nile Waters Treaties remain good law and are enforceable against the respective parties. Construction on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam began in 2011 and it is currently nearing completion. Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) - ArcGIS StoryMaps Ethiopia's dam dispute: five key reads about how it started and how it The drying up of this in Central Asia has been called the worlds worst environmental catastrophe. It provides clear benefits to all three riparian, such as flood control, reduced flood damages and sediment control. The 1902 Treaty did not preclude Ethiopia from undertaking works that might reduce, but not arrest, the flow of waters. These are two of the largest dams in Africa. Download PDF 1.40 MB. It is therefore intrinsically connected with the question of land ownership. In fact, about 85 % of the overall Nile flow originates on Ethiopian territory (Swain, 2011). The decisions that this group renders must be binding on all riparian states. Misplaced Opposition to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD): Update. This is hardly a revelation, as this strategy has long been foremost in the minds of the ruling elites in Addis Ababa and supported by the international powers. On Feb. 26, Ethiopia temporarily suspended its . Cairo Controversy prevailed in the Egyptian public opinion, after Deltares, a Dutch advisory institute, announced on Sept. 15 its withdrawal from a study to assess the risks that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is under construction on the Blue Nile, can cause to Egypt and Sudan. Disputes over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), hailed by both Egypt and Ethiopia as a new chapter in relations between Egypt and Ethiopia based on openness and mutual understanding and cooperation (. These two factors could become serious problems.
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