The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Evaluation of Filling and Operation Plans and Negotiations

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The history of the Nile water use for agriculture has been associated only with Egypt and Sudan. The upstream countries have mostly managed with rain-fed agriculture with limited consumptive use withdrawal from the Nile River and tributaries. Now, global water stress has increased along with the water demand created by rapid population growth and climate change. According to the World Economic forum, at the 2017 rate, there will be a 40% gap between global water supply and demand by 2030. According to the UN in 2019, 2 billion people live under water stress and 2.2 billion do not have access to safe water. As a result, economically strong countries without freshwater supply have been observed acquiring land and water direct and indirectly for food and fodder production for their growing population. The Nile River basin, especially the Eastern Nile, is currently facing water conflict triggered by Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam, an assertion of upstream water right. The historical uneven social, economic, and military development between Europe and Africa resulted in the colonization and domination of Africa. Through long struggle and sacrifice, colonialism was driven out of Africa. But attempts are being made to keep alive colonial remnant water treaties and agreements by former colonies that benefit from them. Egypt has been aggressively frustrating upstream water projects by blocking funding mechanism and other coercive ways. The Nyerere doctrine on state succession to colonial treaties concluded that the former colonies are not bound by colonial water treaties. By 2011, Ethiopia initiated the self-financed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) with storage capacity of 74 billion cubic metre and design power generation of 6000 MW. The dam is located close to Sudan and within three years of completion. Dam filling and operation plan negotiations have sparked conflict mainly between Ethiopia and Egypt. The cause for dragging the negotiations is the implicit position of Egypt that no upstream country has right for a share of the rivers that flow through their territories. Egypt’s GERD dam filling and operation proposals have ingenuously embedded minimum water guarantee issues camouflaged with droughts and prolonged droughts terms. A series of meetings was conducted between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan to agree upon dam filling and operation plans with mediators and without mediators. The meetings end mostly with Egypt withdrawing when agreement was reported close to finish and the whole process to start all over again with new demands. Sudan is upstream of Egypt and downstream of Ethiopia and initially supporting the project but later was influenced to put challenges to the dam filling. Two of the negotiations on the GERD, the Washington D.C. and the African Union negotiations, are presented with implications of some of the proposals. The Declaration of Principles (DOP) signed on 23 March 2015 after several meetings was the first attempt to move the model of relationship from hostility to cooperation. This chapter analyses global and Nile Basin water stress and put in context the negotiations on GERD. Upstream and downstream transboundary relationships are analysed, and major issues of water share, dam filling, and dam operation are presented. Egypt’s extended use of Nile water with trans-basin and trans-continental water transfer to the Toshka Valley and Sinai Peninsula is creating or could create water shortage to the traditional Egyptian farmer, caused by water use policy. Water policy may favour hard cash earning large farms, usually owned by foreign investors, at the expense of the traditional small irrigation farms. Water shortage at the small farms created by Egypt’s water policy that favors big farms and transfer of water out of the Nile Basin can be blamed on upstream countries and dams specially on the GERD and Sudan.