tagged w/ water conflict
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Egypt is a country which does not have the luxury of abundant rains and therefore depends on the Nile for 90% of its sustenance. It is also the spiritual center for the people there as they believe the Gods sent floods during the time of the pharoahs which allowed them food and for the pharoahs to build their tombs. The waters of the great Nile were then seen by Egypt as belonging to no one but them. Religion and politics in the 21st century once again now stands in the way of an equitable agreement that will preserve the Nile's waters for all while also understanding it belongs to none.
Egypt's control of the Nile which amounts to 74% of its waters has been intact since the 1929 agreement with then colonial occupant Britain. This antiquated arrangement which gives Egypt access to the majority of the water simply cannot be sustained in modern times, yet Egypt's Mubarek and Bashir in Sudan have not budged in changing it. The agreement also calls for all upstream projects first needing the consent of Egypt and Sudan in order to go forward, however, Ethiopia which suffers from drought and sees the Blue Nile as sacred has challenged that by building dams for irrigation and a current larger hydropower dam.
Drought now plagues this area as well which has increased demand for water as well as greater demand for energy even though it has been noted that the Aswan Dam in Egypt has hurt the soil's health. Revenge tactics in now building an overabundance of dams that defeat the purpose of equitable sharing will not help any side in this if it does nothing to truly provide water to its people, especially in light of other factors such as climate change contributing to sea level rise.
Last May the upstream countries including Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, and Ethiopia met giving Egypt and Sudan one year to give an answer regarding a more equitable sharing of the Nile's sacred waters. What could give them more clout in coming to an agreement is the independence vote in South Sudan which would see another country on their side in splitting Bashir's influence in Sudan.
There are many geopolitical angles taking shape regarding what has only amounted to a war of words to this point. It will then be interesting to see with South Sudan gaining independence along with the current events in Egypt how this all unfolds in perhaps now working to secure a fair and equitable agreement regarding the waters of the Nile while also respecting its history and sacred traditions in escaping what will otherwise be the beginning of the water wars of the 21st Century.Egypt is a country which does not have the luxury of abundant rains and therefore... more
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The expected emergence of a new state in southern Sudan following a January independence referendum is causing alarm in Cairo because the signs are the infant state will join other African countries battling Egypt for a greater share of the Nile River's waters.
The southern Sudan leader, Salva Kiir, recently visited President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, one of the upstream states opposed to Egypt's control of the Nile waters, to discuss building hydroelectric power stations to enhance development of the infant state.
That is guaranteed to incense Cairo, which vehemently opposes any upstream projects that would diminish the flow of the Nile, which runs into the Mediterranean at Alexandria.
Sudan lies astride the middle reaches of the Nile, the source of 90 percent of Egypt's water. The White Nile, which joins the Blue Nile in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, runs through southern Sudan. The Blue, which rises in the Ethiopian highlands, supplies more than two-thirds of the Nile's water flow.
The upstream states -- Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and Ethiopia -- demand that Egypt and Sudan relinquish long-held rights to 74 percent of the Nile's waters.
These are enshrined in a 1929 agreement from the British colonial era. Egypt and Sudan refuse to give an inch. In May, most of the upstream states grouped together in a new alliance and gave the downstream states a year to agree to a more equitable share of the Nile waters.
They need this because of burgeoning populations, a growing demand for electricity and irrigation for food production and an imperative to stimulate development.
Under the 1929 agreement, Egypt had veto power over all upstream projects that involve the Nile's flow, particularly dam construction.
AllAfrica.com reported that Museveni told Kiir Uganda wants more dams to boost its generating power from 300 megawatts to 3,800 MW over the next five years.
"We also have plans to generate 17,000 MW by 2025," the Ugandan leader disclosed.
According to U.S. diplomatic cables unveiled by WikiLeaks, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sought to convince Washington to postpone the scheduled Jan. 8 independence referendum in southern Sudan because of the potential loss of Nile water.
Ethiopia, the source of the Blue Nile, has strong links with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which has ruled southern Sudan since a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of civil war between the region, mainly Christian and animist, and the Arab Muslim north.
So do Kenya and Uganda, which supported the southerners' struggle against the Khartoum regime of President Omar al-Bashir.
Indeed, Ethiopia's leader, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, one of the most militant of Egypt's critics, claimed in November that Cairo sought to destabilize his country by supporting rebel groups opposed to his regime.
That accusation, devoid of any diplomatic discourse, apparently caught the Egyptians unawares and marked a sharp escalation in the diplomatic war of words over the Nile.
airo denied that. But Egypt and other Arab states provided support for Eritrean separatists who fought for independence from Ethiopia in 1961-91.
Zenawi went on to warn Egypt it would be defeated if it invaded Ethiopia, presumably through Sudan or Eritrea, which border Ethiopia.
However, undertaking such a complex operation is difficult to imagine, even though Egypt considers the Nile a vital national security issue.
"Nobody who has tried that has lived to tell the story," Zenawi cautioned.
Egypt did try to invade Ethiopia in the 19th century after it had conquered Sudan. But that campaign ended in failure in 1875.
Why Zenawi would want to raise the temperature on the Nile issue right now is not entirely clear.
But he has domestic problems and the Nile provides a diversion. He has infuriated Egypt by building five huge dams on the Nile over the last decade and has started construction of a new $1.4 billion hydroelectric facility.
Osman Mirghani, senior editor-at-large of the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, was concerned enough to observe that the Nile question "is something that in the near future may come to overshadow all other regional issues."
"Anybody listening to the statements, observing the frantic maneuvers, or watching the growing tension, might already feel that the Nile Water War has begun in earnest."The expected emergence of a new state in southern Sudan following a January... more
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nations-top-latest-water-security-risk-index/
A new report furthers the hypothesis that water stress serves as a catalyst for conflict.
Somalia has the least secure water supply while Iceland has the most stable in the world, according to a survey of 165 nations released last week by Maplecroft, a Britain-based consultancy company. The study, the Water Security Risk Index, featured three other African nations, including Mauritania, Sudan and Niger, as well as Iraq, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkmenistan and Syria.
Population growth and climate change will further exacerbate water supplies and negatively impact industrial and agricultural sectors, according to the report.
The index measured four inputs: access to improved drinking water and sanitation, availability of supplies and dependence on external sources, balance between supply and demand, and the dependence of each nation’s economy of water availability.
Many of the nations that face extreme risk, such as Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, and Uzbekistan, are experiencing tension over shared and limited water resources. These findings echo previous reports that areas with transboundary water sources have an elevated risk of conflict.
“When water becomes scare it turns into a commodity that people fight for. It also generates corruption due to its dwindling supply that is often controlled by businesses, governments, or criminals and insurgents,” Thomas Sanderson, deputy director and senior fellow of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Circle of Blue.
Pakistan and India have long disputed the water that flows from Kashmir, while Egypt and Sudan are currently embroiled in conflict over a new Nile River treaty, and Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan continue to argue over hydropower and the Amu Dari and Syr Daria rivers.
“In places like Somalia and Sudan, water is used as a weapon, depriving enemies or adversaries of access to it, with the greatest impact on non-combatants, often turning them into combatants out of desperation for water,” Sanderson said.
The report also emphasizes that insecurity stems largely from uncertain and inconsistent supplies. Only 30 percent of Somalis has a reliable source of water, while both Mauritania and Niger are more than 90 percent dependent on external water supplies.
And as resources disappear, people have a tendency to migrate.
“Water scarcity forces people to move their families and livestock to other land often bringing them into conflict with other populations, and frequently resulting in ethnic violence,” said Sanderson.nations-top-latest-water-security-risk-index/
A new report furthers the hypothesis... more
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Agricultural journalist Julian Cribb forecasts a perilous destiny for the world’s river basins and food baskets, a destiny he attributes to climate change and unchecked agricultural demand for water.
Video by Aaron Jaffe for Circle of Blue
Consider Australia’s Murray-Darling, where iconic forests of red gum trees have gone skeletal from thirst. In small towns across the basin, farmers and residents worry their livelihoods may soon share the fate of their beloved gum trees. Cribb, also a professor of science communication at the University of Technology in Sydney, thinks the time has come to manage river basins with efficiency and environmental sensitivity. Farmers, whom he cites as primary managers, must rapidly begin sharing good ideas on a global scaleAgricultural journalist Julian Cribb forecasts a perilous destiny for the... more
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MUMBAI // As night envelops Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, in the Indian city of Mumbai, two dozen dwellers sidle out of their shanties clutching steel ewers and plastic cans. They hurriedly clamber over a wrought iron railing fence, race across a tangle of railway tracks, braving speeding local trains, and crowd around a spigot in a desolate patch on the other side.
Soon the place is burbling with a feverish scramble for water. Amid fist fights and verbal blows, they take turns to fill their containers from the gushing spigot. Then they run back to empty them with relatives waiting on the other side of the railing, and sprint back for a refill.
Sitting on a concrete platform a short distance away, chewing tobacco, is Ravi Anna, recognised as a local goon who controls the spigot. He offers slum dwellers without water connections a chance to collect drinking water between 7pm and 10pm every day – for a fee.
To an outsider, the arrangement might sound entrepreneurial, except that this water is not his to sell. The spigot draws from a water tank belonging to the Indian Railways.
Such pilfering of water, rampant across this coastal metropolis which dreams of transforming itself into the “Shanghai of India”, has gone on for decades. But it is particularly menacing now as Mumbai struggles to slake the thirst of its ever-growing population.
The demand for water from Mumbai’s 12.5 million people is estimated at 4,550 million litres a day, but the city is only able to provide 2,900m litres.
Mumbai has received 30 per cent less rainfall compared to the previous year, depleting its water resources. Grim days lie ahead as civic authorities warn that the city’s major water reservoirs have only 71 billion litres of water, barely enough to last 200 days.
Water supply to homes has been cut by 15 per cent and across commercial establishments by 30 per cent. And the city is bracing itself for more cuts.
In its do-or-die bid to conserve water, the federal government announced last month that no water connection would be provided to new high-rise buildings until 2012, fuelling concerns among real estate developers over the future of upcoming construction projects worth US$250 billion (Dh918bn). It is also promoting water rationing across the city’s teeming slums, through water meters that make a fixed quota available for a fee.
Mumbai’s water deficit is evoking angry reactions from its citizens. Last month, more than 5,000 protesters gathered outside the offices of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the civic authority responsible for water supply, but were beaten back with batons by the police. One protester died in the clashes and a dozen others were injured.
Experts say such conflict over water is expected to rise around the world, emblematic of how climate change makes water supply less predictable as droughts and flash flooding become increasingly common.
“With the government blaming the rain gods, people are nearing the end of their patience and it won’t be long before they take the law into their own hands,” said N Raghuram, the editor of DNA, a daily newspaper.
To contain its water woes, the government is in the process of setting up three new water reservoirs to augment supply. It is also mulling over setting up a desalination plant to convert seawater into drinking water.
But these measures do not address the widespread pilfering, which claims one-fifth of the city’s water supply.
A water mafia operating commercial water tankers are believed to be creating an artificial scarcity in some suburbs to boost their business in connivance with some BMC officials.
In a recent sting operation conducted by a private news channel, journalists posing as potential buyers of water from a wedding party discovered private tankers queuing at a BMC pumping station to fill water that should have been pumped to the city’s denizens.
“It’s uncertain if the world would end as in Roland Emmerich’s 2012, but that water supply in Mumbai will come to naught if random pilferage isn’t stemmed, is a certainty,” said Mr Raghuram. “By simple arithmetic, if pilferage were to be checked, there would be no need for a water cut.”MUMBAI // As night envelops Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, in the Indian city of... more
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Education adviser says Pakistan will approach ICJ, will quit Indus Water Treaty if India constructs any new dam.
LAHORE: The distribution of water is a sensitive issue and it may trigger a war between India and Pakistan, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Education Sardar Aseff Ali said on Saturday.
He made these comments to the media after a seminar, ‘Improvement in the Power Sector’, held under the auspices of the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers of Pakistan.
ICJ: He said Pakistan might seek international arbitration on the water issue by taking it up with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the United Nations Security Council if India tried to construct any more dams that affect Pakistan’s share of water. Pakistan would also back out of the Indus Water Treaty and India would be responsible for the consequences, Assef added.
He said a solution to the problem could not be found through sentimental rhetoric and the Indus Water Treaty was the proper forum for resolving the water crisis.
To a question regarding the Baglihar Dam, Aseff said former president Pervez Musharraf was responsible for the construction of Baglihar Dam. He said India had served two notices to the Musharraf regime before the construction of the dam, but the Musharraf government did not respond to them. The Musharraf regime only raised hue and cry when the dam had become operational, he said. Pakistan lost the arbitration case because of an inordinate delay by Musharraf in tackling the issue, he added.
http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0WTefS2qEJLjcEAzE2jzbkF/SIG=12cp1rf1p/EXP=1262746166/**http%3A//www.conservationinstitute.org/images/86628c60.jpgEducation adviser says Pakistan will approach ICJ, will quit Indus Water Treaty if... more
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