China and the Nile River Basin: The Changing Hydropolitical Status Quo

Abstract

The Nile River Basin (NRB), the world’s longest river, faces a considerable challenge of population growth, degradation and depletion, and equitable water utilisation, which have become a threat to peace and environmental security in the region. Moreover, the hydropolitical landscape of the Nile has been dominated by Egypt. However, the NRB is experiencing a change in its hydropolitical status quo. China has emerged as a financier to upstream countries’ hydropower projects, thus changing the upstream–downstream hydropolitical status quo. Although the existing governing regimes were not beneficial to upstream countries, China’s role in the Nile hydropolitics is not providing an alternative and beneficial and/or win–win cooperative framework. As a result, the environmental and political landscape of the already fragile Nile region has become threatened, thus increasing the potential for conflict. The purpose of this article is to determine, through Homer-Dixon’s environmental scarcity theory, the impact and effects of environmental scarcity in contributing to a nascent conflict. This study conceptualised Homer-Dixon’s environmental scarcity theory as a theory that argues for the potential of conflict in transboundary river basins as a result of environmental scarcity. Environmental scarcity is triggered by a combination of population growth and excessive strain on dwindling renewable resources, exacerbated by unequal access to that resource.