http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/196800/reftab/73/t/Ethiopia-constructs-giant-dam-on-Nile---Water-starved-Egypt-angry/Default.aspx
Updated on: 14/05/2014
Ethiopia constructs giant dam on Nile - Water-starved Egypt angry
CAIRO, May 31, (AP): Ethiopia's construction of Africa's largest
hydroelectric dam on the world's longest river threatens to affect flows of
water to Nile-dependent, waterstarved Egypt, where there is growing
outrage, anger and fear. Egypt in the past has threatened to go to war over
its "historic rights" to Nile River water but diplomats from both countries
this week played down the potential for conflict. "A military solution for
the Nile River crisis is ruled out," Egypt's irrigation and water resources
minister, Mohammed Baheddin, said Thursday amid newspaper reports recalling
the threats of war from Egypt's two previous leaders, Anwar Sadat and Hosni
Mubarak. Ethiopia on Tuesday started diverting the flow of the Blue Nile
for construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Eighty-five
percent of Nile waters originate in Ethiopia yet the East African nation
whose name has become synonymous with famine thus far utilizes very little
of those waters
*Challenges*
Ethiopia's decision challenges a colonial-era agreement that had given
downstream Egypt and Sudan rights to the Nile water, with Egypt taking 55.5
billion cubic meters and Sudan 18.5 billion cubic meters of 84 billion
cubic meters, with 10 billion lost to evaporation. That agreement, first
signed in 1929, took no account of the eight other nations along the
6,700-km (4,160-mile) river and its basin, which have been agitating for a
decade for a more equitable accord. And Ethiopia's unilateral action seems
to ignore the 10- nation Nile Basin Initiative to promote cooperation.
Ethiopia is leading five nations threatening to sign a new cooperation
agreement without Egypt and Sudan, effectively taking control from Egypt of
the Nile, which serves some 238 million people. Mohammed Abdel-Qader,
governor of Egypt's Gharbiya province in the Nile Delta, warned the dam
spells "disaster" and is a national security issue for the North African
nation. "Taking Egypt's share of water is totally rejected ... The Nile
means everything to Egypt," said Gov Abdel-Qader. Baheddin said Egypt
already is suffering "water poverty" with an individual's share of 640
cubic meters well below the international average of 1,000 cubic meters.
Egypt protests that others along the Nile have alternative water sources,
while the Nile is the sole water source in the mainly desert country.
Ethiopian officials say the dam is needed to provide muchneeded power for
development. At a ceremony marking the diversion of the Nile, Deputy Prime
Minister Demeke Mekonnin said Ethiopia could export cheap electricity from
the dam to energy-short Egypt and Sudan. He insisted the dam would not
affect the flow of water to Egypt. Experts say otherwise. Alaa el-Zawahri,
a dams engineer at Cairo University and an expert on a national committee
studying the ramifications of the Ethiopian dam, said Egypt stands to lose
about 15 billion cubic meters of water -- 27 percent of annual share -- each
of the five years that Ethiopia has said it will take to fill the dam.
The country's current share already is insufficient. Egypt also would lose
between 30 and 40 percent of its hydropower generation, he said. "If I was
more of an optimist, I would say it will cause significant damage (to
Egypt)," he told The Associated Press. "If I was being pessimistic, it is a
catastrophe." "Potentially catastrophic" is the opinion of Haydar Yousif
Hussin, an Italian-based Sudanese hydrologist who has worked on Nile water
issues for 35 years. The dam's reservoir "will hold back nearly one and a
half times the average annual flow of the Blue Nile" and "drastically
affect the downstream nations' agriculture, electricity and water supply,"
he said in an article published in the South African magazine
Infrastructure News. Given the massive size of the dam, it could lose as
much as 3 billion cubic meters of water to evaporation each year, Yousif
added. Mekonnin said the dam construction is at 21 percent and should be
complete by 2015. Ethiopia has said the massive dam, located 60 kilometers
(37 miles) from Sudan's border, is being built with a storage capacity for
74 million cubic meters of water and generating power of 6,000 megawatts --
30 percent more than the electricity produced by Egypt's Aswan Dam, built
on the Nile in the 1960s. But very little other information is available.
*Impacts*"It remains irresponsible for Ethiopia to build Africa's biggest
hydropower project, on its most contentious river, with no public access to
critical information about the dam's impacts," Yousif wrote. He urged
Ethiopian officials to "allow some light to penetrate this secretive
development scheme." Ethiopia has timed the dam's construction while Egypt
is at its weakest. The government announced the project in March 2011, when
Egypt's government was overwhelmed by the Arab Spring revolution. The Nile
diversion came the day after leaders of the two countries met in Addis
Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, on the sidelines of an African Union summit,
and days before Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan were due to issue a technical
report on the dam. Information about the funding of the project is also
unclear. The World Bank and other donors have refused involvement,
reportedly because of Egyptian lobbying of countries like the United
States, which considers Egypt a key ally and pivotal to security in the
region. The contract for the $4.8 billion project was awarded without
competitive bidding to the Italian company Salini Construttori, according
to Yousif and other experts. Ethiopia says it is funding the massive
project on its own, urging citizens to buy bonds that earn 5 or 6 percent
interest. Norway's Development Today magazine quoted Kjetil Tronvoll of
Oslo's International Law and Policy Institute as saying that government
employees are being pressed to donate one month's salary to the dam and,
when people protested, they were arrested. A journalist who wrote an
article criticizing the fund-raising methods, Reeyot Alemu, was arrested,
tried for terrorism and sentenced to two years' jail, according to the
Committee to Protect Journalists. The issue of the dam also highlights
traditional differences between Africa's northern Arabs and the blacks of
the south. That perception must be corrected, Egypt's assistant for foreign
affairs, Essam el- Haddad, wrote on Egypt's foreign policy blog. "Egypt's
rejection of the project reinforces a negative stereotype of Egypt that is
spreading among the people of Africa ... that this country is the reason
for the absence of development and economic progress in African countries
because it has acquired, unduly, the largest share of (Nile) water for its
development," he wrote. "Egypt seeks to be a real partner in development in
Africa."
Received on Wed May 14 2014 - 08:22:46 EDT