Egypt is concerned over a dam being built on the Nile by Ethiopia which may reduce their water supply. Negotiations are ongoing.
So no matter if the dam came on line at all or not there will be water shortages and significant problems in Egypt soon and they will get worse.
Is there any chance that Egypt won’t blame Ethiopia for them and that conflict won’t break out, such as a strike on the dam? Is there any doubt that when the hot dry hits Ethiopia would use the water for its own desperate needs?
The sentence right before the one I quoted raises real room for doubt. Egypt is significantly stronger than Ethiopia.
There is the real risk the that result of taking more water is to make the water situation even more desperate while adding on significant issues with power. The decision makers for any kind of large scale water diversion likely won’t be the ones responding personally to the desperation of water shortages. There might be pressure from the electorate depending on how big a chunk of the populace is affected. Also, Ethiopia is still relatively early in their transition to democracy with free and fair elections scheduled for this May. A slide back towards authoritarianism is another possibility rather than listening to the population most affected.
Unlikely. Any strike on the GERD would only temporary hinder Ethiopian hydro-electrical development but it would invite retaliatory strikes to Egyptian infrastructure which would be utterly catastrophic in flood deaths alone (not to mention food/crops/industry/etc). Tough talk aside, Egypt can only deal with the situation that exists.
Ethiopia is, or ought to be, well within its rights. Egypt ought to respond by using Nile water more efficiently and/or maybe some desalination (although it’s expensive.)
On paper, Egypt clearly outguns Ethiopia. But on the ground, other factors come into play - political will, Egypt’s economy, the position of other countries on e.g allowing Egyptian overflights or troop passage.
Egypt would be very stupid to push the issue. This isn’t the colonial days, and Egypt needs to get with the times. It would actually benefit in some ways from the dam, especially in drought times. But they will likely lack the vision to see it.
Ethiopia’s topographical reality as an extremely high altitude mountainous country (split in half by the rift valley) makes any river diversion plan a technological impossibility.
Unless we as humans crack the code to making water flow up and around a mountain range higher than the Alps (and five times it’s area) the Nile will always empty into Sudan where it currently does.
Well, the planet’s eroding environment coupled with what is apparently an out-of-control and steady planet wide population increase doesn’t bode well for the future. It’s difficult not to envision those kinds of conflicts in the not too distant future.
However, since war and its aftershocks of starvation and disease have always been the best forms of population control, the populations of the areas at war may decrease to the point that even the environmentally damaged area can support, thus easing tensions and ending the war. On the other hand, if the war itself further damages the environment, everyone’s a loser.
I’m not sure what this exactly means. From what I can see, the gains for Egypt are pretty theoretical and based on awesome coordination/cooperation between all the dam operators. Colour me -> :dubious: And what exactly does “get with the times” mean in this context?
Why Global Warming certainly plays a role, the problem of Egypt’s eroding coastline is more due to the Aswan dam and how it prevent silt from being deposited at the Delta.
Population is not, in any way, in an out-of-control increase and hasn’t been for decades.
People have been telling the Egyptians since this project began that they needed to get cracking on building solar-powered desalinization plants all along their coastline, and they’ve chosen not to do it, instead waiting until the last minute to start complaining and threatening. Ethiopia is spending a staggering amount of money building this, and they’re going to supply green energy to their entire country, with more to spare, as well as helping people downstream mitigate droughts (eventually) and flooding (as soon as they start filling the dam).
Let me ask – and then answer – a broader question: is there any chance that conflicts over water in general, particularly in hot dry areas like those mentioned, exacerbated by corresponding conflicts over crop failures and hence massive failure of the food supply – will lead to wars in these regions, and spur waves of attempted mass migration like we’ve never seen before? Some countries are much more generous than others in accepting endangered refugees, but we all have our limits – practical, physical, financial, and political.
Those who believe that climate change is no big deal should pay more attention to the central America caravans trying to move into the US now – and for the moment, at least, starvation is not their major problem. Imagine the situation when sheer starvation becomes their major motivation. It’s really ironic – but true – that most countries that will be hardest hit by the deleterious effects of climate change will be the ones least able to afford it or survive it.
I think that war over resources are going to be the norm going forward. Humans are wasteful and don’t slow reproduction - of course we are going to start running out of stuff, but it won’t bother some people as long as their stock portfolio keeps hitting quarterly benchmarks.
Sorry, I wasn’t listening, my stock portfolio was hitting its quarterly benchmark.
We’re definitely going to be looking at increasing resource wars over the next half-century. There’s been many studies that have estimated extra deaths from direct effects of climate change, but there have also been a few that have tried to estimate deaths caused by indirect effects. By far, the largest predicted cause of death from indirect effects are climate change inducted wars. It is coming, it is obvious it is coming, but we cannot do anything because jobs (!), the economy (!), profit (!) and something-something draconian social reengineering. Of course, it has been demonstrated that addressing climate change does not need to be an economic disaster.
But we have seen it before, because it’s already happening. The Syrian crisis of the last decade, with wars and waves of attempted mass migration, has many causes. But a significant one is water shortages exacerbated by climate change.
