Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam vis-à-vis Hydropolitical Justice: Why Egypt and Ethiopia Engage in Hydropolitical Tension over the Dam?

Abstract

The study was aimed to examine the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) from the viewpoint of hydropolitical justice and reveal the reason of Ethio-Egyptian hydropolitical tension over the dam. Conceptually, hydropolitical justice can be defined as procedurally inclusive, environmentally valid, politically sound, and economically reasonable plus distributionally benefit sharing utilization of transboundary water resources in the way of maximizing benefits and minimizing harms of all riparians. Through relying on this concept, the study has employed qualitative research method and utilized secondary sources of data. Accordingly, the analysis of this paper proved that the GERD is a project of water use management and development which fulfill imperative requirements for the birth and growth of hydropolitical justice over the utilization of the Blue Nile. Hence, GERD is a development project of water utilization which could enable both Egypt and Ethiopia to equitably share benefits of the Blue Nile without the worth of another. The analysis of this study assures, with evidence, that the dam has a potential to equitably maximize benefits and minimize harms of both Ethiopia and other lower riparians of the river. Thus, the hydropolitical tension of Egypt and Ethiopia is emanated not from the dam’s feature of strengthening a reasonable, equitable and non- significant harm principle of international water law. Rather from an equitably non-beneficial, legally baseless, scientifically unsupported and greedily motivated political insistency of Egypt so as not to recognize the necessity of GERD from the perspective of hydropolitical justice.