No country is an island
The Nile Basin: National Determinants of Collective Action, John Waterbury, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. pp211
The seeds of conflict are all too common among states sharing a single river basin, as is clear from John Waterbury's The Nile Basin: National Determinants of Collective Action, which assesses the interaction of the Nile River's 10 riparians, or countries through which a river flows. Focusing primarily on interactions between Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda since the end of the Cold War, Waterbury explains how domestic policies and practices with respect to water use have become a matter of concern beyond national borders. Finding constructive action at the collective level among Nile riparians limited, Waterbury argues that it is imperative that they cooperate more effectively with respect to the use, development and protection of the river's waters.
The author takes the state as his main unit of analysis in his assessment of Nile politics, an approach that raises red flags for this reviewer because of its possible attendant marginalisation of civil society and of other non- state actors. However, Waterbury avoids this pitfall by drawing in domestic political and economic dynamics when they have impacted, or have the potential to impact, on interactions between riparians. Waterbury discusses how other units of analysis were appropriate for the study of interaction between Nile riparians in various eras since the late 19th century, examining first the colonial period, when ethnic and religious groupings faced the European colonial powers, and then the period from around 1950 to the present. Though Waterbury sees the state as king these days, other actors, such as international donor agencies, make appearances throughout, though he argues that these agencies have tended to be wooed by various states, rather than being themselves the initiators of projects. As agriculture is opened up to large-scale private cultivation, another set of decisive interests is likely to emerge.
The major recommendations arising from the Nile study also bring domestic politics into focus. As National Determinants explicitly states, improving international cooperation requires that countries put their own houses in order with respect to the conservation and efficient use of water as a step towards building basin-wide policies. As such efforts proceed, and especially if states decide to eschew the "mega-project" approach such as building a large dam in favour of other solutions to irrigation challenges, conflict is predicted to take on new dimensions. Evidencing a strong sense of the ethnic geography of the basin, Waterbury notes specific areas in Ethiopia and Sudan where conflict may occur. In addition, the author dedicates an entire chapter to the once- fashionable mega-projects, leaving aside the impact such initiatives have had on neighbouring states to focus on the domestic returns of such endeavours. The benefits of many such projects are found to have been grossly overestimated.
In times of dispute riparians have often seized upon principles that do not necessarily support equitable access to water use. One such principle is that of "acquired rights", whereby a riparian will assert a claim to a portion of waters based on its having used it in the past. While this principle affords protection to existing patterns of cultivation and population distribution, riparians wishing to increase their use of a river at the expense of others are likely to see in it only an example of the "it-was-mine-first" principle. It is obvious how this principle comes into play when an upstream riparian, for example, embarks on a project to use river waters for the first time, or after not having done so for a long period. Any new uses by upstream riparians are likely to rule out the possibility of increased downstream use. However, new projects by downstream riparians can also raise issues of acquired rights. For example, upstream riparian Ethiopia has been concerned about Egypt's plans to irrigate part of the south-west desert under the Toshka Project because Egypt's actions, by establishing use of a portion of the river -- even if the new use does not exceed previously established apportionment of the waters -- have the potential to limit plans that Ethiopia might make in the future. Stated differently, Ethiopia has been concerned that it will be obliged to ensure that Egypt continues to receive the same amount of Nile water in future in order to allow it to maintain its new uses.
Another principle is that of "unlimited territorial sovereignty", known as the Harmon Doctrine, which asserts that a resource "can be used within that territory as its authorities see fit, regardless of the uses, established or otherwise, of other riparians." As Waterbury writes, Ethiopia's leaders "are disciples in all but name" of the jurist whose name this doctrine takes. Upholding such a principle would clearly mean knocking all downstream riparians out of the game.
In the case of Nile riparians, the interests these principles have been developed to address come into conflict with each other from time to time. But a major factor that keeps the assertion of these interests from escalating into major conflicts is the 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan allocating use of Nile water, the only such agreement among Nile riparians. Both parties have evidenced a strong commitment to the arrangement, which includes quarterly meetings that have been held regularly with only a handful of exceptions since the accord was signed.
The importance of political stability should also not be underestimated. Egypt is the only Nile riparian among the four that Waterbury discusses at length not to have been affected by war over the past two decades. That Uganda, witness to so much bloodshed during the 1970s and 1980s, follows Egypt with respect to enjoying peace for the longest gives one pause. However, even relatively peaceful conditions can carry the seeds of new conflicts, as formerly war-torn countries turn to the task of development. Putting available water to good use is no simple matter, as the case of post-conflict Ethiopia shows: although this country is no longer in the throes of a war with Eritrea, food security remains elusive, and while it is hard not to agree with Waterbury when he argues that establishing food security in Ethiopia is a "moral imperative", his observation that Ethiopia will depend on agriculture for "at least another generation", and accompanying suggestion that basin-wide decisions should take this dependency into account, does raise questions about weighing one country's uses of water against another.
Waterbury mentions, for example, that Egypt's economy is moving away from a dependence on agriculture, and he thinks that the country would do well to develop a "Silicon Valley" of its own. Assuming that Ethiopia is able to achieve food security, would it be fair for it to put its use of water in agriculture ahead of an Egyptian desire to use water to enhance its tourist sector by filling swimming pools and turning deserts into golf courses? Such a question is not as silly as it might seem at first glance, given the importance of tourism alongside a flagging industrial sector, and the fact that Egypt's dreams of exporting information technology on a large scale have, so far, failed to come true. Yet, for Ethiopia simply adding more water to the equation will not solve its problems. Waterbury shows that Ethiopia's experience with big projects -- many of which have not gone beyond the planning stage -- has revealed that its leaders have sometimes been bent on both potentially effective and woefully misguided projects.
Given the centrality of the Nile to the livelihoods of the peoples residing in the basin, it is striking the extent to which citizens have been left out of decision-making processes. The existence of dams and irrigation systems have sometimes been testament to the displacement of populations, not to mention the spending of vast amounts of state resources and hard currency, with ambiguous benefits. One prime example of what the author calls "the imperfect logic of big projects", combined with a lack of transparency and public involvement with respect to water management, concerns the rate of sedimentation in dam reservoirs. Because any dam will eventually be filled by sediment, the tendency Waterbury notes for project studies to underplay the rate of sedimentation has created a false sense of their longevity. Other factors he mentions are the proximity of roads or other means of transportation to sites selected for large- scale capital-intensive irrigation, and whether people are willing to move to such areas.
Guardedness about official information on such matters makes Waterbury's study all the more impressive, drawing as it does on interviews and personal communication with technocrats and politicians directly involved during the author's almost 30 years of research on Nile issues. Deftly weaving political and technical threads together, and linking domestic conditions with moves at the international level, National Determinants provides a lively overview of inter-state dynamics in the basin, while illuminating the key concepts for analysing water politics. However, the ephemeral nature of attempts at basin-wide cooperation and the presence of so many factors mitigating against enduring collaboration mean that Waterbury's choice of the Nile basin as the site of his analysis of collective action has put him at a disadvantage in advancing the study of this part of international relations.
However, while basin-wide cooperation is weak on many levels, the author suggests that armed conflict is unlikely to erupt between countries over water, not only along the Nile but in other basins too. Nevertheless, his mention of the use of water in warfare is a sobering reminder of the resource's importance and of the need to ensure that disagreements over water use, like those over other scarce resources, do not escalate into armed conflict. He writes, "Fouling wells has been a part of warfare throughout history... Yet using water as a weapon provokes nearly the same censure and instinctive abhorrence as does chemical or biological warfare... It will be the weapon of the truly depraved..."
Reviewed by Willa Thayer
