The Nile Basin In Transformation: research uptake and what’s at stake?
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separation
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decrease
separation
separation
Mohamed s. M. Yassin (Ph.D)
The Nile basin territories have witnessed huge transformation since
prehistoric era and continue to be subjected to enormous
transformations. The transformations along the Nile basin territory
constitute substantial challenges and are governed by significant
constraints and thus triggering the potential opportunities that
directly affect the livelihood of the Nile basin growing and
urbanizing population. The multiplicity and the complexity of the
transformational and developmental pathways pose imperative
transboundary cooperation in order to address the current and future
pathways presenting and needed for the prosperity of the Nile Basin
population; that requires innovative cooperative and collaborative
platforms and fora which should engage multi-stakeholders, without
exclusion of interested parties, including policy-and-decision-makers,
academics, public and private sector actors, civil and community-based
organizations, local and regional governments and institutions from
the Nile Basin and beyond the Basin. These physical and virtual
gatherings should frankly, critically and analytically tackle the
issues at stake of the Nile Basin in transparent and scientific
manners aiming to a real shared benefit for the collective communities
of the Nile Basin. The Nile basin policies, programs and projects must
be subject to consensual deliberations by the vast majorities of the
Nile Basin communities to ensure equitable and sustainable prosperity
for all those who are entitled to equal rights on sustainable
development and mutually beneficial relations with the Nile Basin
territorial capital. The Nile Basin community will increasingly face
challenges of food and nutrition security for its expected billion
inhabitants, coupled with environmental and ecological challenges due
to the progressive socio-economic development and infrastructural
erections, particularly the macro-hydropower plants and numerous dams
expected along all the Nile Basin without transboundary shared visions
especially when dealing with the post-interventional stages,
challenges associated with the food wastages, urban solid and liquid
waste and sewerage and its recycling and treatment, challenges
associated with the internal displacements and regional migrations
stimulated by man-made conflicts and natural hazards and disasters,
challenges tied to political instability and competition over the
scarce resources of the Basin especially on the ecological foundation
which is basically land and water, challenges of the ever-growing
climate fluctuations, variations and change almost affecting the
entire planet and consequently impacting the entire Nile Basin,
challenges linked to the progressive pace and race on ensuring
renewable energy and water security efforts by single states and
foreign exploitative investors, challenges of non-sustainable patterns
of productions and consumptions of resources and obsolete forms of
colluded managements, challenges related to the missed opportunities
of achieving the millennium development goals and the currently
running sustainable development goals, challenges associated with the
lack of financing a Nile-Basin-wide sustainable development and lack
of reliable financial institutions to stimulate bankable projects and
programs, challenges due to the absence of modern shared compacts and
legal framework for a Nile Basin communities governance systems
regarding the transboundary river systems. The Nile Basin can develop
collective, collaborative and cooperative approaches to seek common
investments to minimise costs and optimise expected benefits from the
outsourced finance needed for its sustainable development and
infrastructural developments. The Nile Basin community need to
approach the international development financing institutions as a
smart, united and compact community to stimulate and attract foreign
investment and the Nile Basin riparian should turn-off the ignited
conflicts in order to encourage the international and responsible
investors to come to the region, but that need strong will and
determination. Deep, appropriate, technological and
knowledge-and-science-based governance systems should be researched,
developed to be enacted in transboundary and regional frameworks and
contexts.
In summary, this contribution intends to highlight and bring insights
and research findings regarding multiplicity of interconnected and
interdependent challenges and potential opportunities concerning the
current and future generations of the Nile Basin Communities
illustrated through different methodologies ranging from conventional
data collection and literature review to the innovative documentary
digital semi-structured interviews and direct observations from the
Nile Basin territories. It stresses that the Nile Basin is mainly
water, but not merely. It brings critical issues to the resources
management, human rights and the right to development along the Nile
Basin characterised with a diversity of approaches and policy
orientations. It poses the question on what will be the scenario when
the Nile Basin and its river systems become coordinated and not any
more natural systems and how can the reconciliations between nature
and the sustainable development paths be shaped or cooperatively
governed especially on a perspective of urban growing agriculture and
trends of industrialisation. Lastly but not least, it emphasises the
importance of the Nile Basin heritage conservation coupled with the
socio-economic and infrastructural development.
One of the main stakes for the Nile Basin community is the water
availability and its scarcity constitutes one of the major growing
challenges. The Nile Basin increasingly growing populations needs the
water for their food and nutrition security above all for the
realisation of the inspired sustainable development and prosperity.
The water is available from diverse sources, mainly rainwater, river
water, underground water and to some extends desalinated water from
the sea, in addition to the option of restoring the wastewater. These
sources should be safeguarded and maintained renewable. The suitable
and freshwater is an essential for the survival of the human, living
organisms fauna and flora, the forests lakes, wetlands,
agro-ecological systems, and ecosystems in general. The Nile Basin
Ecosystems, wetlands, watersheds and Sudds should be given the due
attention and preserved due to its vital importance for the ecological
balance and resilience sustenance. Its essentiality is bounded with
other resources such as the land, the biodiversity, the climate and
other supporting resources which combined together guarantee the
sustainability of the living and future generations. With the
demographic growth and increasing, socio-economic development and
growth water and land consumption will be more challenged and needs
more viable and wise policies. In the Nile Basin, the expected
socio-economic growth and up scaling of the living standards,
increasing demography, nutritional transitions and intensification of
climate change and variability generate complexity and render the
scenario more challenging. The consumption of water occurs in various
format and uses. The major user of water in the Nile Basin is the
Agricultural and Animal production, the residential uses are modest in
comparison and the expected industrialisation will require more
withdrawal of freshwater for more irrigated agriculture and animal
production facilities. The nutrition patterns are indicators of the
quantity of water used in the eating and drinking. The water used for
eating and feeding animals is far much than the water consumed in
drinking and others residential uses. Actually, the international
standards currently estimating that on average, a person needs between
2000 to 5000 litres of water for his/her sustainment on daily basis.
The type of crops and animals raised play a role in the determination
of the quantities and magnitude of water needed for the produce, for
example the leguminous crops require less water than other crops and
the consumption of meat for protein production puts more pressure for
the water needed in comparison to the proteins obtainable from the
legumes. The increase in temperature expected due to the occurring
climate change makes it more pressuring to find sustainable water
consumption and adaptive crops and plants, additionally, it will be
wise to strengthen climate resilient varieties and boost the
resilience of the Nile Basin community. The Nile Basin Authorities can
develop shared mechanisms and tools to measure the consumption
footprints related to the diverse produced food and feed products and
can also consider the virtual water (green, blue, grey water) export
embedded in the forage and other crops, vegetables, fruits, living
animals, just to be aware about its consumption of the available and
scarce water. As the Nile Basin is currently sustaining around the 42%
of the total African population estimated around half billion persons
expected to reach one billion people by 2050, this puts more pressure
on the need for water and lands as well as on the other resources. The
expected surge in the Nile Basin population if not taken seriously by
the policy-and-decision-makers, bearing in mind comprehensive vision,
one can simply expect endless conflicts and instability, we are
expecting population equivalent to the all the population of Europe to
inhibit the Nile Basin with its limited and scare resources,
dilapidated infrastructures and ignited instabilities. Most of the
Nile Basin countries might become water-scarce or hydro-stressed
countries if right policies are not set in place. Food loss and waste
along the value change in the Nile Basin constitute another attended
challenge and little attention is paid to that wastage, which in fact
is wastage of water, lands, nutritive elements and minerals, loss of
biodiversity and embedded climate needed for the production of that
food. The amount of lost water and food in the Nile Basin occurs due
to inadequacy in the productions patterns, harvesting methods,
post-harvest packaging, storage, transport, more than the considerable
loss, which occurs during and after the household consumption along
the value chain. The Nile Basin authorities should work co-ordinately
to ensure that water and connected resources are used in equitably,
efficiently, effectively productive, economically and environmentally
friendly. There are huge experiences and good practices available and
that needs to be transferred, adapted and adopted to help to track and
address these challenges. The current severe hunger, successive and
excessive drought, frequent floods, repeated crop failures and
pandemic animal diseases, other natural hazards, advancing
desertification, increasing deforestation are alarming and should draw
the attention to the current production and consumption patterns
prevailing along the Nile Basin, communities stricken by these
catastrophic events and phenomenon need assistance to bounce back,
fully recover and ameliorate their coping strategies, and consolidate
their resilience. Most of the Nile Basin riparian states are working
on singular, sub-regional or sub-basin plans and have many dams in
their national pipelines, all in all about 25 new hydropower dams are
expected along the Nile Basin riparian states, mainly for the energy
security, food and water security, climate change adaptation and
mitigation, sustainable development achievements, industrialization,
stability, and comprehensive prosperity. To mention but a few as
example, South Sudan which has no any source of reliable and viable
source of renewable energy has about four major bankable dams at
Bedden, Fula, Lakki, and Shukoli, while Sudan is planning dams at
lower Dal, Upper Dal, Kagbar, Dagash, Sabaloka and most recently it
has built the Merowe Dam, the dams along the Northern Nile River of
Sudan are highly contested due to its clash with the civilization and
existing cultural heritage along that territories, and Aswan high Dam
and Merowe dams are striking examples and lessons learned. Even Egypt
has an important planned new dam to add at Assyout. On the Ethiopian
side, a significant evolution is occurring in transforming the
potential of Hydropower favoured by the topography and availability of
stream water and highland rainwater fall. In fact Ethiopia is expected
to be a hydropower hub for the region and that is boosted by the
construction recently of the Border Dam, then known as the Millennium
Dam and currently under realization as the Great Ethiopian Renaissance
Dam (GERD) intended to be the biggest Ethiopian Hydropower Dam, other
than that mega hydropower plant, Ethiopia has many other plants in the
pipeline. The recently started construction of Rusumo Hydropower Dam
to serve the trans-boundary supply of energy to Rwanda, Burundi, and
Tanzania and the annexed interconnection rid of the Equatorial region
is a good example of the transboundary cooperation. Uganda is building
Bujagali and has plans to advance the construction of Karuma dam among
other dams. All in all, the River Nile Basin matters for all the
riparian countries and all the multiplicity of stakeholders are
deserving to get the maximum benefits out of it in terms of food and
nutrition security, water security, energy security (Availability,
Accessibility, Utility, and Stability) and all the other forms of
beneficial relations, that competitive relations and race to
self-assurance should be motivating factor and incentive to explore
cooperative pathways and sustainable management and mechanisms to
mitigate potential conflicts over the scarce resources of the Nile
Basin and the world as well as singular Nile Basin riparian countries
are rich in good and appropriate practices which can be adapted and
adopted to the Nile Basin community. The transboundary cooperation can
boost and accelerate the achievement of the sustainable development if
a good political will is steered in the right tracks. Agricultural and
arable lands suitable for rain-fed agriculture as well as for
artificial and smart irrigation are abundant and available for the
Nile Basin population, but in reality it will be diminishing for major
reasons associated with the increasing demography, the expanding
foreign direct investments in large-scale agricultural projects
principally export-oriented in addition to other natural factors such
as the excessive soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and
climate change associated factors. Adding to this the occurring
urbanization is consuming huge arable and agricultural lands, it will
be enough to note that on the banks of the River Nile where most of
the fertile lands are available and people continue to build
residential complexes and housing agglomerations, in the long run, we
will face arable lands scarcity and that consumed lands can not be
returned back and the restoration and claiming lands in the desserts
far from the water resources such as the Nile River and Tributaries
will not help too much due to excessively high costs and other
factors. The Nile Basin countries should work in regional prospective
to enhance, promote and optimise the productivity, augment the
efficiency of the resources uses and the benefits from the incoming
responsible investments catering for the trade-offs and address the
spill-overs which might arise when acting in multi-and-cross-sectors
and regional dimensions. The Scenarios change with the change in time,
space and actions of human and nature.
Given the huge and shareable stakes, we cannot wait to apologise for
our future generation if we do not preserve our nature and reconcile
that with our sustainable development policies and plans, we will need
to set think tanks, stocktake positive experiences, develop and
sustain research with disciplinary, interdisciplinary,
multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary and trans- disciplinary
innovative approaches. The Nile Basin community is witnessing
economic, social, environmental, technological, political, ecological,
and territorial and developmental transformation. Therefore, regional
integration, regional cooperation, trans-boundary coordination,
solidarity economies and mutual sustainable development can be the
safety nets if genuine political will prevail.
* The University of Udine, Department of Agro-Food, Environmental and
Animal Sciences, Via delle Scienze, 33100 Udine, Italy. E-mail:
[email protected]
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