In this week’s post I have chosen to follow up on something that intrigued me from last week’s blog post: the findings by Zeitoun and Warner, 2005 that power asymmetry in transboundary water supplies can lead to inequitable water distribution. I haven’t explored transboundary water politics in this blog yet, so this week seemed like a good time to address it.

            

Transboundary water sources are a critical aspect of the geopolitical and economics landscape of Africa, and comprise most of the significant bodies of water that people in Africa draw upon for agricultural, domestic and industrial use. There are a total of 63 transboundary water basins in Africa, which account for 93% of the total surface water available on the continent, cover two-thirds of the total land area, and are home to three-quarters of the total population of Africa (Turton, et al. 2006). Thus, it is safe to say that transboundary water resources and their management represents a significant geopolitical challenge on the continent.

Figure 1: The Most Significant Transboundary Water Basins in Africa (Turton, et al. 2006).

            

There are various reasons that water conflicts arise with regards to transboundary resources. Although the most obvious argument resolves around allocation and distribution of the resource, there also are conflicts regarding water quality, navigation, and environmental protection of the source (Matthews and St. Germain, 2007). For instance, many countries may provide varying degrees of care for a water body, and it can occur where a country upstream may not hold the same concern for environmental degradation or equitable provisioning, and thus may significantly detract from the quality and quantity of the source for another country downstream. Significant political conflict can arise from these disputes, especially in cases where their is considerable disparity between the political influence of the two countries.

Lautze, Giordano and Borghese, 2005 provide a hierarchy of the primary drivers that lead to conflict or collaboration in transboundary water supplies. They divide them into two primary groups: internal drivers and external drivers. Internal drivers are actual objectives of negotiations, such as the formation of a dam or technology and/or funds transfer, whereas external drivers are aspects that are not part of the agreements on paper yet wield significant influence. The following internal and external drivers are presented below, in order of decreasing influence on the terms of an agreement. 

Figure 2: Drivers of Transboundary Water Negotiations (Lautze, Giordano and Borghese, 2005). 

The third listed external driver, Religious of Cultural Affiliation, is an interesting one. There have been certain instances where it has proven to have significant influence upon negotiations, such as in the conflict over the Nile River between Egypt and countries with river tributaries to the Nile.

The Nile river has remained a cultural symbol of Egypt for thousands of years, dating back to the ages of the Pharaohs, leading to a strong sense of cultural affinity for the body of water, and therefore a sense of entitlement to the resource (El-Fadel, et al. 2003). With Egypt remaining one of the most politically influential African countries, this lead to asymmetric and inequitable distribution of the resources of the Nile in the 20th century. For instance, the 1929 Nile Water Agreement provided Egypt with nearly a monopoly over access to the Nile with a mild amount of water set aside for consumption by Sudan. To make things worse, it did so without garnering any support or hearing the opinion of other potentially affected African countries, instead turning to the UK for approval. The 1959 Nile Waters Agreement was more equitable to Sudan, yet still did not consult the Democratic Republic of the Congo nor Ethiopia (despite that 3 of the 4 primary tributaries of the Nile originate within the boundaries of the latter) (El-Fadel, et al. 2003). Ethiopia and the DRC quickly expressed frustration at the lack of recognition for their needs in the terms of the agreement, but were largely ignored.

Egypt and Sudan maintained their position of ambivalence towards the plights of the other countries negatively affected by their agreements. However, in the last 10 years some of these countries have been making radical movements. The Nile Commission of Ministers ("COM") was to meet regarding the Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement ("CFA") and vote upon it in 2010, which was pushed back to 2011. In 2011, Egypt and Sudan asked to push back the vote to 2012, but when the date arrived in 2012, neither country attended. This forced the remaining countries to form a new entity, the Nile Equatorial Lakes Council of Ministers under the Nile Basin Initiative (Metawie, 2004). This group together, without Egypt and Sudan, ratified the CFA and established the Nile Basin Commission. Moreover, they agreed upon projects in collaboration with the World Bank to invest in water infrastructure in many of their countries, all which will have significant implications for the water that Sudan and Egypt derive from the Nile.  

Figure 3: The Nile Basin Initiative Countries (Nile Basin Initiative)

            

Therefore, the complacency and lack of willingness to work with countries upstream led to an agreement being negotiated without Egypt and Sudan, despite their significant interests in the river. Transboundary water negotiations do not always exhibit this level of inefficiency, but when countries with significant political clout over others attempt to leverage it in an inequitable fashion, it can create political push-back and ultimately degrades the effectiveness of water management.