In concluding my blog, I want to acknowledge an aspect I have somewhat neglected: scale . The majority of my attention has focused on interstate cooperation (or lack of). However, interstate cooperation does not necessarily lead to water security for people who desperately need it ( Pittman 2004 ). Nor does it inherently address sustainability. In hindsight, both the neglect of sustainability in cooperative arrangements and more attention to the local would likely strengthen this blog. In the seven blogs posted thus far, I have covered a range of hydropolitical topics in so far as they affect the Nile River Basin. I began by discussing my thoughts on representation – white Western voices often occlude African (and indeed local) voices on key hydropolitical issues. I then elaborated a hydropolitical framework, highlighting the balance of power between the riparians on the Nile, with Egypt as de facto hydrohegemon. I demonstrated that this hegemony is being challenged by the upstream
An account of the Nile would be incomplete without engaging with climate change. Undoubtedly, climate change is going to affect all riparians in the Nile basin by increasing the variability and regional scarcity of water ( Goulden et al . 2010 ). However, the capacity to cope with water stress will likely vary significantly between riparians both because of their individual water resources and institutions and because of state consumption. At root, there is a great deal of uncertainty because of multiple global climate models ( Conway 2005 ). And this uncertainty is often concealed by aggregate metrics and simplistic approaches to water scarcity ( Zeitoun et al . 2016 ). Open cooperation based on reliable data is likely the only solution to sustainable use of the Nile basin. The Nile is projected to see some reduction in runoff by 2050 ( Aaerts et al. 2006 ; Manabe et al . 2004 ) or a large increase in runoff ( Arnell 2003 ; Milly et al. 2005 ). Either scenario will see con