Egypt & Ethiopia: The Water Conflict

Worth shedding light into maybe the first likelihood of a major conflict over fresh water, in bullet points.

Ethiopia went ahead with building the renaissance dam in 2011, a huge dam with 74 billion m3 (bcm) of storage capacity, during the period of instability Egypt went through (Arab spring) with declared intent of only generating hydro electricity.

Ethiopia is where 85% of Nile water reaching Egypt and Sudan originates

Egypt is classified as a water stressed nation (chronic water shortages) with per capita freshwater availability less than 800 m3/day.

Based on an agreement in 1959, Egypt and Sudan shared the water measured at Egypt’ southern borders which was estimated to be 84 bcm: 55.5 bcm for Egypt; 18.5 bcm for Sudan; and the rest to account of various water loss mechanism such as evaporation and seepage

This agreement, however, did not consider the future needs and growth of the riparian nations particularly Ethiopia.

Nile water is the source of 95-98% of fresh water available in Egypt if we count the irrigation water re-used along the Nile River and its delta.

Egypt is currently using all its 55.5 bcm quota.

There were many studies carried out by the Ethiopians regarding building dams to store water to use for land reclamation instead of relying on the irregular and unreliable rainfall. One of these main studies is the study by the United States Bureau of Reclamation (cited in Whittington and McClelland, 1992) to use stored water from dams to reclaim 434,000 ha of lands.

Ethiopia has full right to use its own water to prosper and guarantee a constant supply of water and expand their agriculture lands. And of course, then the initial claim by Ethiopia to use the dam only for electricity generation was misleading.

The dam will reduce the water reaching Egypt by 3 mechanisms 1- Temporary reduction during the time the reservoir is filled 2- Permanent reduction due to water evaporation from the reservoir surface 3- Permanent reduction as Ethiopia starts using the stored water to increase its cultivated land.

The temporary loss is the most dangerous as it means a sudden reduction in Nile water reaching Egypt (and Sudan). Such reduction will depend on the number of years Ethiopia plans to fill the reservoir. This will result in an estimated reduction in water flow reaching Egypt from 4-12 bcm/year. Already the first phase of filling is completed with an amount in the range of 4 billion cubic meters in just one year only!

Why this temporary most dangerous? Because it is impossible for Egypt to implement a plan quick enough (Ethiopia is planning to fill the reservoir in 5-6 years) to compensate for such sudden and huge reduction in water resources. Impossible in terms of time and cost!

The cost for lost agriculture lands and ensuing unemployment, the cost of building desalination plants to increase water resources and the cost of water conservation measures.

It is worth mentioning that the water reduction in Egypt’s quota will then remain between an estimated 4 (Nashed et al. 2014) to 12 bcm/year (Egypt State Information Service, 2021) when Ethiopia starts to use the water for land reclamation.

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Therefore, a unilateral decision to build and fill a huge dam like the renaissance without an agreement with Egypt and Sudan is not wise and is the type of decisions that causes nations to be in conflict.

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