#8 - Concluding Remarks

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 riparians, particularly Ethiopia, and that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is emblematic of this change in power relations.

 

I then considered the influx of foreign assets, especially the heavy investment in African infrastructure by Chinese banks. I tethered the change in foreign investment to the changing hydropolitical situation in the Nile. Chinese investment has begun to release the stranglehold of Western finance on the upstream riparians. Fundamentally, this has allowed Ethiopia to move ahead with various infrastructure projects like the GERD unabetted. I then turned back the clock to emphasise that the tension in the Nile, often dubbed as ‘water wars’, is more a result of historical and colonial agitation than simply the spark of recent developments by upstream riparians. Finally, I argued that climate change is set to further agitate the tensions on the Nile, straining water resources with growing populations and increasing demand for water. However, I also stressed that though climate change is a great challenge to the regional hydropolitical situation, it also presents an opportunity for cooperation.

 

It seems to me that cooperation in the Nile relies on (at least) three things. First, an accurate assessment of the Nile Basin both in social demand and physical capacity. Second, all riparians must be engaged equitably and be free of foreign yoke[i]. Third, local Nile users need to be taken into account. All three of these elements will be tested by growing populations, increasing demand and changing hydrology under climate change (Kimenyi and Mbaku 2015). I think it fair to say that only a robust and legitimate basin regime which ensconces local knowledge will endure. And only one that factors in the needs of the basin itself will be sustainable.

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Lucas Bainbridge

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[i] Mbaku (2010) argues that foreign (particularly colonial) influence undermines the legitimacy of cooperative arrangements as well as making them difficult and costly.