Troubled waters

Reem Leila talks to experts about the causes of the escalating dispute over water from the River Nile

---

The failure of recent negotiations between Egypt and Sudan and the remaining seven other Nile Basin countries to reach an agreement over the Nile Basin Initiative Framework Convention (NBI) placed an enormous burden on negotiators as leaders of Egypt, Kenya and Congo convened on 24 May in Cairo.

The negotiations ended with five Nile Basin countries -- Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya -- signing a convention on 14 May that not only failed to recognise the rights of upstream states to veto projects that could effect the flow of water to them, but which also failed to acknowledge Egypt's historic right to 55.5 billion cubic metres annually.

International law experts unanimously agree that Egypt's share of Nile water is legally enshrined in a series of international treaties agreed between 1891 and 1997. The conventions and treaties alone, however, will not solve a dispute that Ali El-Ghatit, professor of international law at Cairo University, says will be fiercer than earlier wrangles over oil.

The 6,700km long River Nile is an international watercourse access to whose waters is based upon several clear principles, among them that the share of any country be proportionate with its population size and the extent of its agricultural lands. Nor should any of the Nile Basin countries act unilaterally, in a manner that harms neighbours who share the river water.

"Under the 1969 Vienna Accord no upstream country has the right to impose political sovereignty over a source of the Nile," El-Ghatit says.

Calls from upstream states to repeal the 1929 agreement which the British signed on behalf of what were then British colonies, guaranteeing Egypt's "historic rights" to Nile water, first began to be voiced in the 1950s. But the 1997 UN treaty regulating mutual utilisation of international river courses in any non-navigational way stipulates that existing agreements must be respected unless they are unanimously amended by all the concerned countries. "Accordingly, the recently signed agreement between the five Nile basin countries is not binding on either Egypt or Sudan," says El-Ghatit.

The treaty signed by the five source states comes into force in May 2011. Political and diplomatic negotiations to end the stand-off have, therefore, several months to succeed, says Cairo University Institute for African Studies' Ibrahim Nasreddin.

"The Nile can provide enough water for all the countries that depend on it," he argues. "And even if the five countries managed to build dams, which is near impossible, they will only contain five billion cubic metres of the River Nile's 1,660 billion. There is no need to panic."

Source countries, Nasreddin told Al-Ahram Weekly, can do little to reduce Egypt's share of Nile water.

"If they could they would have done it a long time ago," says Nasreddin. "The River Nile flows northwards. The depth of any of the Nile's 70 sources ranges between 200-500 metres. The Nile sources located in Ethiopia and which provide Egypt with more than 85 per cent of its water are on average 500 metres. It would be impossible to build anything like the High Dam in 10 months, yet that is what would have to happen if the construction is not to be washed away by the annual flood. This year already two dams have been washed away by the floods."

The 20-year old feasibility study completed by some source countries and foreign states to build 50 dams on the River Nile within 50 years has not yet been implemented due to the high cost of the construction. According to Nasreddin, "none of the African states can afford the huge sums involved nor could they repay the amounts were they to receive the bulk of funding in the form of preferential loans."

Ethiopia cannot build dams not only due to the depth of the sources, "but also because of geology, since the bedrock where dams would have to be built is granite," states Nasreddin.

"Dams used in generating electricity are not a problem though there is little, if any, chance they will be built. Ninety per cent of agriculture in Ethiopia depends on rain, a figure that is reduced to just 80 per cent in the other source countries."

"And suppose that the dams are built. It is Egypt that will benefit most. These dams will prevent silt coming up the River Nile course, thus protecting the Aswan High Dam from silt pressure. There is no need to worry because in 10 years any dam which is built will be destroyed under the powerful pressure of the silt."

Nasreddin is not alone among water experts in worrying that the real cause of the current dispute is to be found in longer term, geo- political objectives. There is an American- Zionist plan which aims at dismantling Egypt, he says.

"Egypt must work hard on preserving the unity of Sudan and prevent the south from splitting from the north. If Sudan is divided into two states we will have another Somalia, with all the disputes that involves. Eventually there will be calls to split Egypt, too, for Nubia to form an independent state."

Sayed Felefel, professor of River Nile water affairs at Cairo University's Institute for African Studies, agrees. "Since the beginning of the 1980s Egyptian politicians have turned their backs on Africa. Promises were made to invest and provide African states with funds to develop but these were not kept. What we are suffering from now is a result to what we have done -- and not done -- for more than two decades," Felefel argues.