5.8C Water conflicts

• Nile river: Facts

  • The river has huge seasonal variation due to the rain in Ethiopia
  • The waters of the Nile have provided the essential life-support system for human development
  • Longest river in the world stretching 4,132 miles
• Nile river: who has the rights?

  • In 1929, the Nile Water Agreement was made which granted Egypt the rights to most of the river water apart from a tiny bit in the Sudan
  • 1959 Egypt and Sudan signed an agreement increasing the allocations of water in both Egypt and Sudan

  ->Problem was that Egypt is 90% dependent on the waters of the Nile

  • 2006 a Nile River Basin Commission was established to ensure equal and fair usage of the River Nile
• Nile river: Dams

  • The renaissance dam built at $5bn (£3.6bn), and three times the size of the country's Lake Tana
  • The dam is the largest hydropower project in Africa and will create a reservoir containing 74 billion cubic meters of water
  • The economic losses to Egyptian agriculture could be up to US$51 billion
  • GDP loss would push unemployment to 24% and potentially displace people and disrupt other economies