Water, Food, & Energy: The Nexus - Wilson Center Film About India

Some people absolutely hate the term: the Nexus. In the world of water security, "nexus" is commonly used to describe the complex intersect where energy, food, and water come together, often poorly managed or understood, and the connections, links, and possibilities for conflict or cooperation. can manifest. 

Water, food, and energy are at the core of what we, as a civilization, hold essential: water and food, and energy for everyone, but in vastly different forms. Too often, the big energy generation that comes from hydro-generation, nuclear, & coal for the greater good, comes at a cost for the environment and ecosystems (like fish in the case of this film) and at a cost for some people. 

The people that pay the price are the ones who lose land and water access due to flooded reservoirs behind hydropower dams, or the ones who live downwind of a coal-burning plant, or those whose land and water have been designated or contaminated due to nuclear waste, or the ones who will never see a clear sky, clean water, the environment of a long-ago memory. The environments are at risk due to their geography. The people are at risk due to their lack of opportunities and economic/political position. In the end, all of us pay the price.

A recent production: Broken Landscape: Confronting India’s Water-Energy Choke Point from Washington, DC-based Wilson Center highlights the complexity and sometimes failure of the coordination between needs of water, food, and energy for the environment and for people living where these three necessities interface. Their film won the 2015 Silver Telly Award and is very much worth 13+ minutes of your time. Get a glimpse of how the conflicts of water, food, and energy can manifest and please think about new ways in which we can address these three needs harmoniously. The future holds only more of these potential conflicts as our populations increase along with increased demand for limited resources of food, water, and energy.  Check out the Circle of Blue's Choke Point series for more information.

Land Use Change in Nile Basin Impacts Nile River Water

During a panel discussion this week about changes in the Nile River basin, the conversation centered on policy, diplomacy, history, and development. We focused our talk largely on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Much discussion about the Nile centers on the Nile Treaty, the history of colonialism and water rights, and the current development needs of upstream countries. The discussion occurs without really knowing the texture and smell of the Nile River, nor the faces of the people who rely on the water everyday. I was on the panel and spoke about 20,000 people in Ethiopia who are and will be displaced directly by the Renaissance Dam, the unknown number of people impacted in Sudan. Farmers in Egypt may be affected indirectly if a technical solution to water storage and release is not reached between the countries. In Egypt, poor farmers are already standing in the bread line, in Sudan internally displaced people are eking out a way to survive, and in Ethiopia the poor are exposed to disease and suffer food & water insecurity during another el nino driven drought year. My understanding is that there is are two human faces to development: 1st is the face of poverty that needs development that you can see readily when you hit the streets - in need of clean water and nutritious food, medicine, basic material goods, and 2nd is the face of subsistence that is sacrificed or harmed for the greater good because they are on and/or using the land, water, or other natural resource that needs exploiting in exchange for economic wealth. What none of us addressed much is the river itself. The unknowns of species both aquatic and terrestrial, hydrologic variability, water quality...there is also an ecological face not directly included in our panel, though it is crucial to all the other pieces - diplomatic, economic, political, cultural - combined. Here I'd like to speak of one aspect of the environment - trees - that are connected with the health of the entire river system.

A National Geographic short video highlights a man's interest in providing energy alternatives to harvesting trees for cooking and heating in Uganda. While the focus of the narrative is poverty reduction - it could just as easily gone in the direction of protection of water resources. The video mentions the incredible deforestation actively denuding Uganda - as it has happened in Rwanda, Ethiopia, and so many other places within the Nile River Basin, particularly in the last 30-40 years. One major and relevant Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam concern is the operability of the dam after only some years of sediment trapping. The Blue Nile carries incredible amounts of sediment suspended in the water - this same sediment is what was responsible for fertilizing Egypt's successful farming efforts for millennia before the High Aswan Dam cut that sediment flow off 100%. Deforestation accelerates erosion rates. Keeping trees in place then looks to be crucial in slowing the rate of erosion. This is important especially for downstream neighbors.

What is sediment and what does it do?
Sediment, in general terms, is eroded material made up of small fragments of earth, so small and light they can be transported in water, suspended in the flow for a period of time, usually due to how fast the water is moving. Sediment is heavy enough though, that it will fall out of the water when the water is slowed down or still. Places that cause sediment to deposit include wetlands, floodplains, deltas, and dams.

Wetlands, like the large inland complex in South Sudan called the Sudd or the Nile delta in Egypt, are important traps for sediment. There is a wetlands complex in the Mara River Basin where the SELVA team is working now. Water velocity is reduced when it comes into a wetland, usually because of the topography - wetlands are typically flat and wide. In general, if water has room to spread out, it doesn't rush forward as intensely. When water enters this space after being channeled in a river bed, it spreads out and the slower movement allows for the suspended material to settle to the bottom of the water column. This suspended material can hold nutrient-rich qualities that help plants grow. It can also be the basis for building new land. And because of fluctuations in water movement and sediment transport, as well as biological growth or population, these areas are in constant flux - land will build and submerge, islands will change shape. In the case of the Mara wetlands complex, the water prior to entering appears brown from such high sediment load, and clear where it leaves the wetlands, having left behind a significant amount of the matter the water was carrying. The nutrients and calm environment make these areas perfect nurseries for species such as birds, small mammals, and aquatic species.

The same sediment deposition is true in flat areas called floodplains. Floodplains are the areas that are found around a riverbed that stretch for some distance and are where water will reach when there is a flood event - either an annual cycle of precipitation, or an isolated event. Engineers try to create forecasts of where these plains extend, but often they can't account for large natural events - or political sidestepping - to guarantee the safety those who choose to live in a floodplain. There are plenty of stories in America alone about the mishaps caused by human engineered landscapes, particularly of rivers, that do not guarantee safety and security of communities encouraged to claim those spaces. Flood plains, even ancient ones, such as the Willamette Valley in Oregon, are incredibly productive farmland. The history of Egypt contests to this along the Nile - although deposition no longer occurs because of High Aswan Dam, the depth of years of deposition extends far into the earth.

Finally, there are dams. A dam is essentially a man-made wall in the middle of a waterway. The wall has particular spots where there are openings that allow water through, concentrating the energy of that water into those openings. In the case of Renaissance Dam, those openings will contain turbines to turn and, through a process, generate electricity. But the water slows down when it hits a wall, before it finds its way to those openings. Some of the energy is lost and in turn, the suspended material is dropped. The deposition of this sediment behind a dam can cause a loss in the functionality of channeling high energy water into those openings - thus causing the turbines that generate the electricity to slow down or stop working altogether. Sediment loading behind Roseries Dam in Sudan has been such a problem to dam functioning that the dam had to be elevated by 10 meters in 2014. This has also been a perennial problem in the Inga Dams on the Congo River. It costs money to dredge the sediment out from behind a dam - money and an energy-intense vacuuming process - then where to put this sludgy substance? Sediment is not only earth, it is whatever is on or in the earth too - any sort of chemicals, heavy metals, other pollutants - when you have a pile of this stuff that is concentrated, it may not be good for human health.

All of this is to say that deforesting is the major culprit in sediment load in rivers and sediment is good for some purposes, such as farming and formation of wetlands and deltas, and destructive in other cases, such as irrigation canals and dams. When you remove trees from the landscape to put in large agriculture or because the trees themselves are a product that can be traded for cash or used for fuel - you risk altering that landscape significantly - the land and the water. In some cases, such as the Dalmatian Coast, the trees are cut, the soil washes away, and then there is no replacing it. The topsoil is gone and nothing can grow. To this day the need for wood to supply material to build Venetian shipping fleets leaves its mark along the Balkan coastline. Aggressive development or just uncoordinated efforts can lead to some unintended, but not unforeseen, consequences. In the Nile River basin, there is still no coordinated development effort - no ongoing communication between basin countries about how to best manage the shared resource. This may stem in part from the historic domination of the Nile River by one country, Egypt, but that domination is changing due to the natural shifts in political and economic landscapes in East Africa as countries come into their own and regional populations boom and demand more resources. Perhaps the Tri-Governmental cooperation on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a step toward a Nile governance that is cooperative and has an aim of coordinated development efforts. Environmental management would fit in nicely with such a new direction.

Publication on Peacebuilding in the Aral Sea Basin of Central Asia

My friend and colleague, Mariya Pak, recently released a publication she coauthored on the complicated history of a minor river in the Aral Sea basin, the Isfara River. In the paper the authors highlight the complications caused by water sharing between countries, even when those countries were under the auspices of the Soviet Union. The countries of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan share the Isfara basin, which is a sub basin of the Syr Darya, in the infamous Ferghana Valley. Ferghana Valley has been the theater for tremendous terrorist activity up until our present times.  One small river basin, one big history of distinct negotiation and renegotiation of water rights, allocation, and management.

Central Asia is a region to watch in relation to water. Some of the densest projected dam construction are centered on this part of the world. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the counties here have struggled to integrate into the world market, some have been more successful than others - Tajikistan having had to declare a state of emergency due to the poverty of citizens with no electricity in tough winter conditions.

Transcontinental Shipping Route Via Nile River?

In 2013 the idea of expanding the shipping capacity of the Nile River to allow for goods to travel from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea, and European markets, was proposed. Egypt is indeed exploring the idea, despite the logistical challenges of infrastructure that is outdated and outmoded, like the Aswan Dam. If this route was possible to implement there are certainly other challenges. Ongoing conflict, political instability, and poverty still wrack the countries along the route of the White Nile. However, the idea that Egypt is exploring the concept is a shift in mentality across the Nile countries - a shift that has been presenting itself consistently in recent years. This shift is an openness to trade agreement possibilities across the Nile basin countries - a reality of official and prolific regional trading that is uncommon across the African continent.

The Nile River, as a resource, is used by basin countries as a drinking water resource, for agriculture, to generate electricity, for cultural & religious purposes, for historic and national identity, and for transportation. Amazing how one resource can contain such diverse uses - and amazing how such a central and important resource still lacks an overall development and management plan.

Egypt Eyes Nile River Expansion

By MarEx  2015-10-02 13:09:43 

On the heels of its Suez Canal expansion, Egypt has signed a grant agreement with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to explore the feasibility of creating a cross-continent shipping line which would expand the Nile River and connect the Mediterranean Sea to Lake Victoria.

The $650,000 grant will be paid by the Korea-Africa Economic Trust Fund, an AfBD entity, and finance the first phase of the required initial feasibility studies for the establishment of the cross-continent shipping line.

The project aims to convert the Nile River into a sustainable transport line and link Nile Basin countries such as Egypt, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.  

If successful, the project could increase encourage trade and increase economic collaboration between the Nile Basin’s countries.

The project was initially agreed to by heads of state at the January 2013 African Summit.

But while the Nile Basin’s nations feel bullish about the project’s potential, it has sparked debate and criticism. According to a Alexandria University study, the proposed shipping line may not only be difficult to complete, but impossible.

The study contends that there are several engineering issues that must be overcome to make the shipping lane a reality. The Nile is dotted with dams, bridges and waterfalls which could cause difficulty in constructing the cross-continent line.

The Aswan reservoir poses an additional problem. Its five lock chambers have a water height differential of about 98 feet. While the lock could potentially facilitate river transportation, it has not been used or renovated since 1961. In addition, the Aswan Dam creates another obstacle as its water differentials range between 350 and 600 feet and would require massive renovation as well.

AfDB is a multilateral development finance institution established to contribute to the economic development and social progress of African countries. The AfDB was founded in 1964 and comprises three entities: The African Development Bank, the African Development Fund and the Nigeria Trust Fund.

Diplomatic and Complexity Analysis Applied to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

Recent research piece was published on Tuft's Water Diplomacy pages looking at the complexity and diplomacy surrounding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Tuft's website is great resource of interesting ideas about world water resources. Lead author, Elizabeth Cooper, explores concepts of complexity as applied to the Nile basin and discusses the recent events surrounding cooperation and some of the stalling factors. The authors offer some thoughtful suggestions for the need for a flexible agreement - and in an ever changing world and environment, flexibility and adaptable policies are more necessary than ever. However, this in itself is a major challenge and isn't how our political system is currently wired. Looks forward to the next installations of this series.

Coping with Uncertainty and Feedback in the Nile Basin

Elizabeth Cooper, Shafiqul Islam and Larry Susskind on October 6, 2015 in Insights

This article is the second installment of the series Water Diplomacy: Issues of Complexity Science and Negotiation Theory

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Water disputes are difficult to resolve because they are complex. These disputes occur in open and changing systems with numerous stakeholders, interactions, and interdependencies that make it difficult to anticipate or manage complex systems. One aspect of complexity has to do with uncertainty in how the networks and systems involved are likely to respond to stresses, such as rapid changes in flow, changing needs, new development priorities, and growing population. In the Nile River basin, Ethiopia’s construction of a dam has introduced new uncertainty to the already complex scenario of managing the Nile’s resources among riparian states and competing stakeholder priorities. In this insight piece, we describe how different types of uncertainty, as well as unpredictable feedback among actors, processes, and institutions, help us diagnose the nature and source of complexity in the Nile. By working to understand the contingent, contextual factors at play in the case, this analysis allows us to begin to identify potential points of intervention that could enable resolution of conflict in the basin to move forward.

Facing Uncertainty and Acknowledging Interconnections in the Nile Basin

The Nile Systems flows are highly seasonal and geographically variable. (image from the 2012 State of the Nile Report)

Our knowledge of real world systems is uncertain; we have imperfect information and face a range of unknowns. Uncertainty manifests in complex water disputes partly because the problem space of the conflict is open. In complex water systems, it is difficult to plan for possible outcomes when there is no way to forecast the impacts and interactions of changing water supply, water quality, and various aspects of human and institutional behaviors. For example, in a study modeling the impacts of climate change on the Nile that was reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, forecasted future flows ranged from a 78% decrease to a 30% increase. If future flows can’t reliably be predicted, it is not possible to anticipate and plan for other dependent factors that impact water security and water sharing in the Nile.

Uncertainty also comes from the unpredictable interactions of natural and human systems. In our globalized world, multiple foreign interests are invested in the resources of riparian countries on the Nile. For example, some developed countries have pushed to acquire more land in the Nile basin to ensure that they can feed their growing populations back home. “While these deals are typically described as land acquisitions, they are also, in effect, water acquisitions.” These deals widen the range of stakeholders and interests included in the problem space and therefore introduce more variables that increase uncertainty in efforts to manage shared water.

Different Faces of Uncertainty

At its simplest: uncertainty describes something that we don’t know or know only in an inadequate and imprecise way. However, how uncertainty is defined or approached varies between disciplines: some uncertainty can be identified and quantified, some can be reduced through gathering more information, some can be qualitatively described, and some cannot be identified or reduced through any practical means.

Definitions of types of uncertainty range from classification of the source and how it may be reduced, to how uncertainty impacts potential actions or outcomes from an event or decision, to how perception of uncertainty shapes the decision making process (see: van der Sluijs 2005; Webster and Curry 2011; Islam and Susskind 2012).

An excerpt from Islam S. and L. Susskind (2012) Dealing with Uncertainty in Water Management. Abstract #H31I-1252. presented at 2012 Fall Meeting, AGU, San Francisco, Calif., 3-7 Dec. Click image for larger view.

This connection to a globalized world demonstrates how interdependencies among global food price fluctuations, economic variability, differences in development doctrine and levels of international aid, and other diplomatic and political factors all contribute to uncertainty in attempts to manage shared resources in the basin. When attempting to make predictions in this system, we need to acknowledge the types and range of potential sources of uncertainty from each of these sub-contexts. When planning for these “known unknowns,” even if we don’t know precisely what their impacts will be, we can use modeling tools to bracket their potential effects with some confidence. The “unknown unknowns”, though, are much harder to deal with. These are events and contexts that are entirely unforeseen, and not predictable using our current understanding and best available tools.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

Ethiopia’s construction, beginning in April 2011, of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has introduced many new “unknowns” into attempts to broker agreement on transboundary water management of the Nile. The dam is situated on the Blue Nile, the Nile’s largest tributary, near the border with Sudan. Siting and feasibility studies were originally conducted by the United States Bureau of Reclamation between 1956 and 1964. After decades of waiting, the dam has become a point of pride for Ethiopians. It has also become a national project: the substantial cost of constructing the dam has been funded without reliance on foreign financing, and is being shouldered by the Ethiopian government, which has borrowed the maximum amount from state banks, and by Ethiopians domestically and abroad. Government employees have been encouraged to use a month’s salary yearly to buy bonds in the project.

Ethiopia initially encountered very strong opposition from Egypt regarding the construction of the dam. “Violating Egypt’s quota of Nile water is a genocidal war against 80 million people,” wrote Egyptian commentator Hazem el-Beblawi in 2010. He perhaps was speaking hyperbolically, but his statement conveyed the urgent sense of identity that Egyptians attach to the Nile. Egypt saw Ethiopia’s effort to build a massive dam on the Blue Nile as a threat to Egypt’s historical, legal, and cultural rights to the Nile. In 2013, Egyptian politicians discussed military action  against Ethiopia to deter it from building the dam. Then-President Morsi stated that “all options are open” and that if the Nile’s flow “diminishes by one drop, then [Egyptian] blood is the alternative.”

The prospect of a new dam, the largest in Africa, that might threaten Egypt’s access to water, rocked already unstable relationships among stakeholder countries that depend on the river. Despite rising tensions however, over the past few years, and especially after the election of Egyptian President al-Sisi in May 2014 (Zaerpoor 2015) the bombastic rhetoric has faded and diplomatic means have prevailed regarding the GERD, among three of the 11 riparian countries of the Nile. Egypt and Ethiopia, with Sudan acting both as a participant and an intermediary, have brokered a preliminary agreement to address the impacts of the dam on each of the three countries’ use of water from the river.

The agreement was signed in March 2015. Without specifically addressing many of the issues the construction of the dam poses for the region, including inter-dam coordination, dam safety, the rate at which the dam will be filled, and how electricity generated by the dam will be brought to customer countries, among other concerns, the Declaration of Principles outlines a framework of concepts and promises to guide further negotiations among the three countries. It also calls for the creation of a tripartite technical committee to develop proposals to address technical and operational questions. However, since May 2015, when these technical experts were convened, disagreements over their management have derailed that process.

Though a preliminary accord has been reached on the GERD, agreement on how the full set of riparian states will share the Nile’s waters broadly remains out of reach, at least for the moment. Additionally, the fact that many of the impacts of the dam are still not well understood poses an obstacle to reaching a more comprehensive agreement to manage its effects on the basin. Its construction is likely to have quite a few far-reaching repercussions, some direct and some quite indirect. For example, proponents of the dam have emphasized that the GERD will only affect the supply of water in downstream Egypt (the dam’s strongest opponent) during the period it is being filled. After that, the dam will release water downstream steadily—rather than only during concentrated periods, as it does now during the rainy season. This will allow Sudan to remove much more water from the river than it does now. Sudan’s current infrastructure limits its storage capacity, but a steady flow will allow year-round irrigation.

Signing of the accord on the GERD. (photo source)

This advantage to Sudan threatens, from the standpoint of some analysts, Egypt’s likely water allotment. Egypt currently uses some water that Sudan is entitled to, in addition to its own, since Sudan does not have the capacity to store all of the water it is allotted. Additionally, the local scale impacts of the dam on the people of Ethiopia and Sudan have not been fully considered in the negotiations on the dam up to this point. The GERD’s ramifications for water management in the region are an example of how, in a complex system, “…the lack of proportionality between inputs and outputs means that the dynamics of change are highly context-specific” (Ramalingam et al. 2008, 26). 

Identifying Feedback and Enabling Conditions in Efforts to Cooperate on the Nile

Feedback could provide a partial explanation for the shifting tenor of negotiations among Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan. In 2013, Egyptian politicians’ threatened war, but in 2014, the Egyptian foreign minister called a state visit to Addis Ababa “a new phase of our relationship based on mutual understanding, mutual respect and a recognition that the Nile binds us”, and in March 2015, a framework agreement—though only a first step—was negotiated. Some change in the interactions between parties and influences on their perspectives allowed for greater cooperation to begin, increasing the opportunities for further collaboration and trust-building. This trend led to “confidence building” becoming one of the principles of agreement in the accord on the GERD among the three countries.

Defining Feedback for a Complex System

Feedback processes are embedded in complex systems and influence system behavior. ‘Feedback’ describes how a “change in an element or relationship often alters others, which in turn affect the original one” (Jervis 1998). Feedback loops in complex systems can be positive – with an increase in some variable amplifying a change in the system. An example from agriculture would be how a decrease in vegetation can increase erosion, leading to poor soil quality, contributing to further vegetative loss, erosion, and worsening soil quality. A human systems example of positive feedback is the rate of increase in a viral social media post – as more people see and share the item, it becomes more popular until it reaches its peak. Feedback loops can also be negative, in which the system resists the changes imposed by the input. Supply and demand economics uses a negative feedback loop.

The principle of feedback also applies in complex systems’ sensitivity to initial conditions. Egypt’s historical right to the majority of the Nile’s water—and its adamance that it will hold this advantage in future agreements—is an example of how initial patterns or relationships may be especially influential to the development or resolution of a conflict (akin to the idea of path dependence.) Egypt’s expectation that it will maintain its current rights to water is not entirely without reason, since the Nile is essentially the only source of water  in its nearly entirely desert terrain.

However, upper riparian states on the Nile challenge Egypt’s monopoly on water, arguing that it perpetuates inequitable distribution of water and is out of line with modern international water law. They have attempted to negotiate a basin-wide agreement to share water through the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), but Egypt has been reluctant to participate in negotiations that might jeopardize its historical advantage. Egypt holds power and influence in the region; before the GERD project began, then-Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi asserted that Egypt had blocked foreign financing of the GERD. Thus far, Egypt has been unwilling to entertain signing the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA), the product of the NBI’s efforts to negotiate a replacement for the colonial-era Nile Waters Agreements. It argues that any infringement on “current uses and rights of any other Nile Basin State” would be unacceptable. Looking at the Nile Basin as a whole, Egypt’s reluctance to negotiate in the context of the NBI, combined with its position of leverage and power vis-à-vis other parties, is an obstacle to reaching agreement on sharing the river’s resources among riparian states.

In this complex system, it is a challenge to identify the particular mechanisms or tipping points either catalyzing or obstructing the process. The analytical tools discussed above provide some insights, but many variables—political, technological, ecological, and others—interact in a context of already high uncertainty, making potential interventions a moving target. As we account for the dynamic relationships and events involved in the Nile system, we might ask what conditions could enable (though not necessarily be sufficient to cause) the parties to negotiate a durable agreement.

Identifying Opportunities for Intervention in a Complex System

What are potential points where intervention in the Nile system could make space for more cooperation? Cause-and-effect is not a practical way to analyze a complex system, but we might consider instead what conditions are needed to make cooperation possible. Examining enabling conditions can clarify the factors that may act as tipping points to characterize a problem or move it toward a solution. Active recognition of interdependence among all parties is considered a key enabling condition to allow for effective negotiation and resolution of a transboundary water problem (Choudhury and Islam 2015). Preliminary cooperation over the GERD could therefore be a promising sign for the Nile: The Nile basin countries are becoming increasingly interdependent. Construction of the GERD increases lower riparians’—especially Egypt’s—dependence on Ethiopia and other upstream countries for their own water supply, whether or not the current rights to water are preserved. Egypt’s coming to the table to discuss the GERD with Ethiopia and Sudan is the first explicit evidence of its recognition of interdependence with other riparian states, and thus potential willingness to cooperate.

Conclusion

In complex scenarios such as the Nile case, high levels of uncertainty make fixed or optimized solutions impractical. “…[T]he option of optimal design is not available to mere mortals. The number of combinations of specific rules that are used to create action situations is far larger than any set that analysts could ever analyze even with space-age computer assistance” (Ostrom 2005, 31). Additionally, addressing questions about how much and what quality of water is needed—and how it should be distributed among the parties—is necessarily subjective, and changes with time. Achieving water security for the riparian countries of the Nile involves making judgments and tradeoffs among competing values while keeping equity and sustainability as guiding normative anchors. Actionable answers to these questions are not fixed, and will require analysis and process to arrive at contingent resolutions.

Planning in this context must grow out of a mutual recognition of interdependence. The construction of the GERD has highlighted riparian countries’ sovereign interests, but it also has created opportunities to expand the pie, for example by offering priority to downstream countries to purchase surplus electricity generated from the dam.

Efforts to reach a resolution to the conflict must also be based on a shared understanding of the facts of the case. Efforts to establish joint fact-finding so far around the GERD and for basin-wide planning generally have been contentious, with stakeholders taking widely varying conclusions and leaving unanswered questions from a preliminary joint assessment of the dam’s impacts in 2013.

Ultimately, a durable agreement will need to be flexible and contingent:

• It should include jointly undertaken monitoring and fact-finding regarding the resources and needs in the region.
• It should include a forum in which new decisions can be negotiated and recurring issues can be revisited and renegotiated as necessary. This should include a conflict resolution mechanism or plan to help the parties resolve disputes that arise.
• Its application should be adaptable, so that if a strategy for implementation is no longer appropriate for the problem it can be altered, or even reversed, efficiently.

Bibliography

Choudhury, Enamul, and Shafiqul Islam. 2015. “Nature of Transboundary Water Conflicts: Issues of Complexity and the Enabling Conditions for Negotiated Cooperation.” Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education155 (1): 43–52.

Jervis, Robert. 1998. System Effects. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Ostrom, Elinor. 2005. Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ramalingam, Ben, Harry Jones, Toussaint Reba, and John Young. 2008. Exploring the Science of Complexity Ideas and Implications for Development and Humanitarian Efforts. London: Overseas Development Institute. http://www.odi.org/publications/583-science-complexity.

Zaerpoor, Yasmin. 2015. “When Efficiency and Feasibility Are Not Enough: A Scalar Comparison of Transboundary Water Management Approaches in the Nile Basin.” Unpublished paper. MIT.

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Elizabeth Cooper

Elizabeth Cooper is a master’s student in Conflict Resolution, focusing on environmental policy negotiation, in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Shafiqul Islam

Shafiqul Islam is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Water Diplomacy, and the Director of the Water Diplomacy Initiative at Tufts University. Follow on Twitter: @ShafikIslam

Larry Susskind

Larry Susskind is the founder of CBI and Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Vice-Chair for Instruction at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School