Editoral-Rival claims to Nile waters By Xan Rice

FOR a decade nine states in the Nile basin have been negotiating on how best to share and protect the river in a time of changing climates, environmental threats and exploding populations. Now, with an agreement put on the table, talks have broken down in acrimony.

On one side are the seven states that supply virtually all the Nile’s flow. On the other are Egypt and Sudan, whose desert climates make the Nile’s water their lifeblood. “This is serious,” said Henriette Ndombe, executive director of the intergovernmental Nile Basin Initiative, established in 1999 to oversee the negotiation process and enhance cooperation. “This could be the beginning of a conflict.”

The sticking point between the two groups is a question going back to colonial times: who owns the Nile’s water? The answer — “it is for all of us” — might seem obvious. But Egypt and Sudan claim to have the law on their side. Treaties in 1929 and 1959, when Britain controlled much of the region, granted the two states “full utilisation of the Nile waters” — and the power to veto any water development projects in the catchment area in east Africa. The upstream states, including Ethiopia, source of the Blue Nile, which merges with the White Nile at Khartoum, and supplies 86 per cent of the river’s eventual flow, were allocated nothing.

However debatable its claim under international law, Egypt strongly defends it, sometimes with threats of military action. For decades it had an engineer posted at Uganda’s Owen Falls dam on the Nile, monitoring the outflow.

But in a sign of the growing discord, Uganda stopped supplying the engineer with data two years ago, according to Callist Tindimugaya, its commissioner for water resources regulation. And when Egypt and Sudan refused to sign the agreement in April on “equitable and reasonable” use of the Nile unless it protected their “historic rights” the other states lost patience.

Convinced that from their point of view there was no purpose in more talks, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania signed a River Nile Basin Cooperative Framework agreement in May. Kenya followed, and Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo look likely to do so — causing alarm and anger in Egypt. When parliaments in six states ratify the deal, a permanent commission to decide on water allocation will be set up — without the two states that need the river most.

Opposition by the upstream states to the colonial treaties is not new. Ethiopia was never colonised, and rejected the 1959 bilateral agreement that gave Egypt three-quarters of the Nile’s annual flow and Sudan a quarter, even before it was signed. Most of the east African states also refused to recognise it, and earlier Nile treaties agreed by Britain on their behalf, when they became independent in the 1960s.

Under the agreement signed by five countries, each state’s share of the Nile basin water will depend on variables such as population, contribution to the river’s flow, climate, social and economic needs, and, crucially, current and potential uses of the water — a factor which will heavily favour Egypt and Sudan.

The disputed article, in which Egypt and Sudan want their historic rights guaranteed and the other governments prefer to a clause where each nation agrees “not to significantly affect the water security of any country” — has been left out of the agreement, for further discussion.

— The Guardian, London

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