Water expert Nader Noureddine: Ethiopia is building 3 new dams
"Al-Nahda" affects the generation of electricity at the High Dam by 25%
The filling of the Renaissance Dam should not have taken place except by agreement. Getty
The negotiations between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan ignored the beginning of the basic issues. Getty
The filling of the Renaissance Dam should have taken place only by agreement. Archive
Nader Noureddine: "The High Dam will provide Egypt with 5 years of water."
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The water expert, Dr. Nader Noureddine said that the most dangerous thing in the Renaissance Dam crisis is the news of Ethiopia’s intention to build three new dams, which will push the region to the edge of the abyss. Noureddine considered that Ethiopia’s declaration of the start of filling the dam without agreement is an exercise of the logic of absolute sovereignty over water resources, what the world today considers a kind of Barbarism, and Noureddine referred to the ability of the High Dam to absorb the negative repercussions of the Renaissance Dam for at least five years, but he acknowledged its negative impact on the ability of the High Dam to generate electricity by at least 25%, and Noureddine expressed his pessimism about the progress of the current negotiations, calling for it to be It has a time limit, after which the Egyptian or Sudanese negotiator has the right to return to the Security Council, or to seek arbitration by the Water Committee at the World Bank.
In detail, the water expert, professor of water resources and land reclamation at Cairo University, Dr. Nader Noureddine, said in an exclusive interview with Emirates Today in Cairo that “the risks of constructing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on Egypt and Sudan go beyond the current dam itself, and go beyond it until news of Building a series of other associated dams on Ethiopian lands, as the silting load of the Blue Nile is unparalleled in the world, with 136 million tons of silt per year, a remarkable matter that was reflected in the images captured of the start of the initial filling of the dam, and the brown color of the water was evident. Dark, and this means that the amount of silt can fill the Renaissance Dam lake within 50 years, if new dams are not built, and the silt in these quantities can weaken the production or generation of electricity from the dam by 25% every 10 years. Nur al-Din continued, “This danger is not merely an imagined perception, but rather the developers of the Ethiopian dam project have reached it. Three dams have actually been built, and they have even been called“ Daba ”,“ Croudby ”and“ Pipil ”, and that by completing the construction of these dams it will arrive. The total water withheld is 200 billion cubic meters.
Negotiate the coming wholesale water
Noureddine noted: “He called, for this reason, from the outset that the negotiations between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia should not be related to the management and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, but rather negotiations over water coming from Ethiopia in bulk, and to focus on obligating Ethiopia to guarantee a limit of water coming out of its lands every year. , No less than 40 billion cubic meters in heavy and medium floods, and 35 billion cubic meters in lean years. ” Noureddine continued: “Ethiopia has taken Egypt and Sudan in the negotiations towards talking about the dam, its dimensions and storage capacity, and whenever the Egyptian or Sudanese negotiator touched on talking about water and the minimum quantity of it received, the Ethiopian negotiator responded that the negotiations are not related to the division of water or water quotas, citing that this The discussion requires the participation of all the Nile Basin countries in it, and this is a meaningless argument because the ongoing negotiations are related to the Blue Nile, which concerns Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia only, while the rest of the Nile Basin countries are partners in the White Nile.
Unpleasant connotations
Noureddine said that “Ethiopia's announcement of the start of filling the Renaissance Dam without an agreement and during the negotiations carried three unpleasant indications: The first is that Ethiopia decided to start filling it without making it clear whether this year's flood was of a heavy or lean type, and therefore decided to see the matter from the angle of its interests. The interests of Egypt and Sudan have only been hit, and they had to wait until August to see the flood level. The second is that the decision bears an intention to break the will of Egypt and Sudan and an insistence that negotiations will be based on the Ethiopian whims, whether in the first filling of the dam, or in its management and operation. And third, the amount of water that was required to launch the start is relatively small, about 9.4 billion cubic meters.
And it was easy to get along. But the Ethiopian transcendence considered this obtaining the approval of Egypt and Sudan, not the agreement with them, so Ethiopia acted with the logic of absolute sovereignty, and this is no longer acceptable in international relations, as shared water resources require joint sovereignty in international law.
On the total volume of water expected to be deducted from the water quota of Egypt and Sudan due to the Renaissance Dam, Noureddine said: “We have to imagine that the 75 billion cubic meters of the capacity of the Ethiopian dam lake was originally coming to Egypt and Sudan, over the next five years, this water is an Egyptian loss. Sudanese from the water balance, it could have been stored in Sudanese dams such as Al-Rusayris, Sennar, and Meroe, or in the High Dam in Egypt, and an Egyptian whose results will translate into a decrease in Egypt's stockpile balance in the High Dam, by about 40 billion cubic meters, during the next five years.
Water evaporation
And Noureddine added: “Also, after the end of the first filling, and the beginning of steady flows from the Blue Nile, there is another opponent. The water evaporates, as the Benishangul area on which the dam is located is one of the highest in Africa, as its level is about 560 meters above sea level, while the level of Addis Ababa is 1820 meters, so the evaporation there is very high. We estimated it at about five billion cubic meters. Also, at the beginning of the first 10 years, the cracks at the bottom of the lake will lead to a deep seepage of five billion cubic meters, and during the descent of water from the top and the formation of water pressure on the turbines, to recycle them and operate electricity, the scattering will lose two billion cubic meters, according to Ethiopia's recognition. Accordingly, it is expected that there will be a permanent shortage in the shares of Egypt and Sudan, ranging between seven and 12 billion cubic meters, to be divided equally between Egypt and Sudan, according to the 1959 Agreement.
This loss may be compensated for in the years of torrential floods, but do not forget that the capacity of the Ethiopian dam lake of 75 billion cubic meters may eat up all the flood waters, so Egypt and Sudan will have to endure drought years, as only 32 billion cubic meters of an average of 49 billion will reach them. Cubic meters, without benefiting from years of abundance.
"The list of other damages that the Renaissance Dam carries to Egypt and Sudan is extended, including salting large areas of land, losing huge amounts of silt, loss of fish wealth, eliminating biodiversity, and causing the disappearance of river animals."
On the possibility of the High Dam containing the expected damages of the Renaissance Dam, Noureddine said: “If the High Dam Lake was full in the years of heavy flooding, its storage capacity would reach 162 billion cubic meters, and the living depth in it would be 95 billion cubic meters, 75 billion cubic meters of which would be deducted during The first filling, and thus (i.e. the High Dam Lake) will lose about 50 billion cubic meters of its balance, and this will lead to a decrease in the generation of electricity for the High Dam, as recognized by the Ethiopian side, from 20 to 30%.
He went on. Noureddine: “Although recent years have witnessed high floods, and although we were able to create a reassuring balance, the shortage of 50 billion cubic meters of water will affect the future stock of the Aswan High Dam, because the dam was built for (al-Qarni storage), that is, to provide water in the seasons. The abundant use of it in the years of drought, and this amount of water is not an easy matter, as it is close to Egypt's share of water from the Nile for a year, and three times the share of Sudan for the same period, and to avoid this we had to adhere to the requirement to extend the period of storage of the first filling to between 7 to 10 years ».
Noureddine concludes this point by saying: "In any case, the High Dam will secure and reassure Egypt and not let it feel the shortage of water for five years after the launch of the Ethiopian dam, after which the matter will depend on the water coming from Ethiopia, and the extent of its abundance or shallowness."
Regarding the rumors about the possibility that Egypt will have to buy water from Ethiopia or African countries to compensate for the water deficit, Noureddine said, “We have to realize that we are facing two independent sources of the Nile, one coming from Ethiopia, the Blue Nile, Atbara and Sobat, and the other coming from the equatorial regions, which is the White Nile. As for the latter, it does not contribute more than 15% of the Nile’s water, or about 12 to 13 billion cubic meters, a percentage that does not represent anything significant for Egypt or Sudan (that is, about one billion cubic meters per month), and it is self sufficient for the riparian countries, and it does not overflow, Even if these countries demanded a re-division or similar Ethiopian calls, since Entebbe, it would not have a significant impact on Egypt or Sudan.
As for Ethiopia, it stores water to generate electricity and sells it, not in order to sell water, as electricity is more expensive than water. Moreover, it cannot negotiate with us to sell water, and if it did, the European Union and the world would have to confront that. Otherwise, this precedent would give the source countries an opportunity to blackmail the downstream countries and seize their money and resources, and it is a precedent that was not and is not recognized by international law, and if it occurred, problems would explode. 168 transboundary rivers in the world, and it will change the logic that water is a divine gift to life that transcends borders, like air, running among people, and not wealth dedicated to a region such as oil and minerals.
Mounting deficit
Noureddine acknowledged the rise in the Egyptian water deficit, reaching 42 billion cubic meters per year, and the low level of the individual water to approximately 550 cubic meters per year, which touches the water poverty line, and said that “the solution is to adopt alternatives such as desalination of sea water, or research. "The Congo River project or something similar, but it is definitely not buying our historical water shares."
Noureddine added that he is “pessimistic about the future of the ongoing negotiations on the Renaissance Dam for the aforementioned reasons, and for the Ethiopian negotiation behavior, which necessitated blaming him from the African Union, and also calls for his apology for announcing unilateral steps, and to apologize to Egypt and Sudan.”
Noureddine pointed out that «it was necessary for Egypt and Sudan to coordinate a unified negotiating strategy from the beginning, because Ethiopia exploited the contradictions between them, but the ousted President Omar Al-Bashir and his (Brotherhood) ideology prevented this in the past, which can be remedied after the current political change in Sudan, And after Khartoum, with time, it became clear that more damages are being caused by the dam.
Noureddine stressed that the negotiations must have a time limit, especially in light of the Ethiopian negotiator's extension of the negotiating rounds for more than nine years, and he also stressed the need to wave the paper back to the Security Council, the Hague Court, or the dam experts committee at the World Bank as an alternative arbitration body. If no solution is reached under the African ceiling.
Sudan asks to postpone the dam negotiations for consultations
The Sudanese Ministry of Irrigation has requested that negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam be postponed between Khartoum, Cairo and Addis Ababa, after resuming a few days ago, for a week for internal consultations.
The ministry said, in a statement: "The negotiations to fill the operation of the Renaissance Dam were resumed at the invitation of the African Union, and in the presence of experts and observers."
The statement added, "The Sudanese delegation requested at the beginning of the session to postpone the negotiations for a week, to continue the internal consultations conducted by the negotiating team."
Sudan had received, last week, an Ethiopian proposal to link the agreement to operate the Renaissance Dam with a comprehensive agreement on sharing the waters of the Blue Nile.
The Ministry of Irrigation statement clarified that the request to postpone the negotiations is related to "recent developments in the negotiations."
The High Dam will secure and reassure Egypt, and not let it feel the lack of water for five years after the launch of the Ethiopian dam, after which the matter will depend on the water coming from Ethiopia, and the extent of its abundance or shallowness.
It was necessary for Egypt and Sudan to coordinate a unified negotiating strategy from the beginning, because Ethiopia took advantage of the contradictions between them, but the ousted President Omar Al-Bashir and his "Brotherhood" ideology prevented this in the past, which can be remedied after the political change that Sudan witnessed, and after Khartoum became more clear with time. From the damages the dam carries to her.