Operational planning of WEF infrastructure: quantifying the value of information sharing and cooperation in the Eastern Nile basin

Edo Abraham,Pieter Van Der Zaag,Jeroen Verhagen

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac1194

Abstract

Integrating the planning of a multi-reservoir system in nexus with agricultural and electricity infrastructure could alleviate security concerns for these resources in regions where demand is growing while water and land scarcity are exacerbated by climate change and anthropogenic pressures. This study focuses on the benefits of resource integration and cooperation in the Eastern Nile basin. To overcome common limitations of equilibrium and soft-linked partial equilibrium models (e.g. high levels of spatial aggregation, non-insightful cooperation scenarios and a lack of heterogeneity), we propose a regional hard-linked WEF-nexus model that explicitly represents resource connectivity networks for water and electricity, and describes heterogeneity in resource availability, production potentials and physical constraints. Using a non-linear operational process, we optimise reservoir operations, water allocations, cropping patterns, electricity mixes and trade quantities on a monthly time-step over multiple years in a receding horizon fashion to maximize economic benefits for each country and regionally. This iterative implementation allows the modelling of operational changes as feedback against exogenous climate disturbances and enables information exchange between upstream-downstream countries. Thus, we describe four different levels of transboundary cooperation with their corresponding constraints and policy objectives. Compared to the reference scenario of unilateral planning, our results indicate an increase in regional economic returns for scenarios in which river flow information is shared between countries (+9%), river flow and trade information are shared (+10%) and WEF resources are coordinated regionally (+15%). These increased returns successively come from an increase in the effectiveness of agricultural water consumption, especially in Sudan, a change in trade patterns for agricultural products and a shift in cropping patterns. These findings underscore the importance of adequate representations of spatial and temporal heterogeneity of resources and their connectivity, as well as the need for a more diverse set of collaboration scenarios to facilitate planning in transboundary river systems.

Highlights

Under the pressure of population growth, socioeconomic and cultural changes, the demand for freshwater, energy and food has grown sharply over the past fifty years and is expected to further increase in the decades [1]
Validation and comparison with historical data River discharges in the unilateral scenario at Deim and Dongola, respectively located in Sudan close to the border with Ethiopia and Egypt, show excellent pattern similarities (PEDiem = 0.93, PEDongola = 0.81) and small normalised magnitude errors (NAREDiem = 0.03, NAREDongola = 0.06) with respect to discharge data obtained from the Sudanese Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources
Given the limited possibilities to allocate the water resources in Ethiopia, the good performance at Diem is a validation of the regression and partitioning techniques used in the production of the runoff data-set and the description of flow losses

Summary

Introduction

Under the pressure of population growth, socioeconomic and cultural changes, the demand for freshwater, energy and food has grown sharply over the past fifty years and is expected to further increase in the decades [1] Because these resources have many shared attributes [2], countries will experience increasing competition between different sectors as demand grows and resources become scarce. Compared to the situation in 1990, a population growth to 400 million in 2040 (+209%) [7] is expected to be accompanied by a 22 fold increase in annual demand for electricity (890 TWH) [8, 9] and an increase in the daily caloric supply (including supply chain losses) of 3400 TJ (+271%) [10, 11] To meet these growing demands, countries need to boost their agricultural production [12, 13] and expand their energy portfolio; a significant number of multi-purpose reservoirs have been built, are under construction or planned. The importance of integration and the shortcomings of existing approaches were already emphasized by [17] in 2004, recent literature [18] highlights the lack of progress in the Eastern Nile, posing WEF security risks for downstream states and resulting in suboptimal water utilization and weaker resilience for the whole basin

Methods

Results

Conclusion