Webinar on Water Security in the Nile, Mara, Mekong, and Amazon Rivers for American Water Resources Association

A few months ago I gave a webinar for the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) on Water Security. In the talk, I give examples of development changes to water security from the Nile, Mara, Mekong, and Amazon River basins. You can listen to the talk here. The entire file, including Q & A, is about an hour long; just a warning.

The content: I touch upon the what, who, where, why, and how of water security as an analytical tool. I see it as a versatile lens through which one can view water resources adept at including the voiceless water system and environmental system, as well as the underrepresented subsistence communities, or groups without agency or voice in decision-making, in a way that the controversial and outmoded integrated water resources management (IWRM) pointed to - for inclusiveness. Although IWRM has not been the magic bullet for water management, it does have some thoughtful and valueable ideas that can lend themselves to advising water management for shared water resources.

Water security is, in my opinion, so versatile and interdisciplinary, it helps to capture the complexity of shared water resources. I also find that water security, as a concept, is a backbone for understanding and describing water sustainability, a term I used to avoid, but now embrace when it is presented within a context and with practical application. Water security being interdisciplinary, requires multiple methods both qualitative and quantitative in origin - without the need to weight one over another. This helps to consider multiple scale, geography, time, people, values, as well as how all the component parts work together and form a complex water resources-based system. I am currently piecing together a paper about these concepts in the Nile, Mekong, and Amazon with a colleague that I hope will publish early next year.

Please feel free to leave any feedback you feel is appropriate and can help me conceptualize things better!

As Talks Move Forward Between Egypt, Ethiopia, & Sudan, More Speculation

Talks continue in Egypt this week between the Tripartite Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, though news media reports that Egyptian officials said that Ethiopia's progress on the Renaissance Dam is outpacing negotiations. A recent Egyptian news dialogue with Dr. Haytham Awad explains what is happening and what is expected to happen with current negotiations. Ethiopia began construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in 2011 and the dam is said to be ready for commission in 2017. Updated photos online show incredible progress on the project, a result of 24/7 construction to meet schedule. This PR video by the company Salini, the Italian company helping the Ethiopian Electric Power Company (EEPCO) (at the time of this blogpost, the EEPCO pages are unavailable) with this (and many other) hydropower dam project. Things have come a long way from 2012 when I was there. There is a full on camp, the flow has been channeled, and there is quite a bit more of the actual, eventual, dam structure on both sides of the river.

I've just noticed that EEPCO as I knew it in 2012, was officially split into two corporations in 2013. One to manage electricity generation, the other electricity distribution. I will have more on this in another post.

Lecture at Boston University about the Sacred Blue Nile

A professor at Boston University gives another spin on the Blue Nile, one of two major Nile tributaries that contributes the majority of water to Sudan and Egypt downstream. Part of the University Lecture Series, Professor James McCann spoke about the spiritual essence of the Blue Nile from his personal experience and understanding of regional history. It is not common to hear the angle of spiritual and emotional importance of the Blue Nile in lecture halls, but this does not mean that these aspects of the Blue Nile are lacking. Quite the contrary - the Nile in general is hugely emotional, spiritual, and personally important for everyone in the region. He includes the topic of the Renaissance Dam as yet another iteration of the visions and dreams associated with the sacred and important river resource.

The Blue Nile is described as an incredibly unique place, yet it has been poorly explored, defined, and described. Once the Renaissance Dam is finished and water begins to fill the valley behind the wall, much of its sacred mystery - the species, the gold, the history - will be under water indefinitely. The reservoir will be one of the largest of its kind on the continent - taming the wild river fluctuations, destructive floods, and high mineral and nutrient-rich sediment upstream of Sudan and Egypt (in what will be most likely called, the Meles Zenowi Reservoir).