An Update on the Nile Controversy | Dale Whittington
Dale Whittington, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be discussing the paper ‘An Update on the Nile Controversy’.
Abstract
It has now been over 13 years since Meles Zenawi, the late Prime Minister of Ethiopia, announced that Ethiopia would build the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The GERD is the largest hydroelectric power dam in Africa, located on the Blue Nile immediately upstream of the Ethiopia-Sudanese border. After years of continuous negotiations between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia, there is still no agreement among the Nile riparians on how the GERD will be operated. The Nile riparians are now facing a new, rapidly evolving situation. Ethiopia has finished construction of the GERD, and this year the filling of the GERD Reservoir has been completed successfully. Sudan is in the midst a tragic civil war. The Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement has finally been ratified, but without the approval of Egypt and Sudan. The upper basin Nile riparians may now establish a Nile Basin Commission without the participation of Egypt and Sudan. In this lecture I will review the lessons learned from the Nile negotiations over the past 13 years and their implications for the current situation on the Nile. I will discuss examine possible ways that the impasse on the Nile may be transformed by either new ideas or events, and the role the international community can play in assisting the Nile riparians in this new era.
Further Reading
Whittington D. (2024). “The Long Shadow of the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement.” Water Policy. Forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2024.035
Murgatroyd A, J Hall, K Wheeler, and D Whittington. (2024). “Trade-offs between hydropower and irrigation in transboundary river systems: the implications of further reservoir development on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.” Environmental Research
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