My first published paper on initial research findings regarding the Renaissance Dam is part of a special water's issue of Global Dialogue and can be found here:http://www.worlddialogue.org/index.php
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| The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam |
Global Dialogue is the online
journal of the Center for World Dialogue,
an NGO that works to promote understanding and discussion between people on
different global issues. This issue is specifically about water conflict and
cooperation. Other papers include topics of River Basin Organizations with
coauthor Susanne Schmeier sharing information
on her database and related research, the Indus, Cyprus, Southern
Africa, water conflict & cooperation, and water law.
My paper covers the dam from a
predominantly Ethiopian perspective - both the national and local viewpoints.
The international basin is also considered, but to a lesser extent.
GLOBAL
DIALOGUE Volume 15
The Human Security Dimensions of Dam
Development: The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
JENNIFER C. VEILLEUX
Jennifer C. Veilleux is a Ph.D. candidate in
the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State
University.
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arge-scale dam development provokes strong emotions because of costs and benefits, whether potential or actual, to political, socio-cultural, economic, and environmental systems. Countries currently developing water resources through dam projects are doing so in response to poverty issues, coupled with pressures from population growth and changes to the climate, specifically, changes to water resources. The question of human security, a loosely defined term that covers the stability, safety, and access to opportunity of an individual and a related community now and in the future, as well as the environment upon which that individual or community depends, is a way of describing the scope of changes dam development causes in different sectors and at multiple geographic and temporal scales. Dam development has far-reaching diverse impacts that may include altering economic and social systems, providing a buffer against increasingly unknown challenges due to climate change, and potentially destroying ecosystems and traditional lifestyles. Dams may also be political symbols of national modernity, power, and identity.
Traditionally, dams have been assessed for immediate
national economic and political benefits, excluding costs to local-level, often
traditional, long-term river-dependent communities and environmental systems.
Studies in recent decades, including the World Commission on Dams report, have
considered the local-scale socio-cultural and environmental costs of dam
development and found that these are often overlooked.1Subsequent studies have
found that social and environmental costs extend well beyond the accepted
impact area currently assessed by international standards.2 Dam development
dominates landscapes and excludes many other uses of land and water resources.
This indicates that dams are in conflict with the use of water resources in
other sectors. Despite the conflicts and costs, in this century hydropower dams
have re-emerged as a cornerstone of economic development plans, especially in
China and Brazil, and most recently, on the African continent.3
Often, national-level modernisation needs outweigh the
local desire to maintain traditional subsistence lifestyles, and in fact dam
development is seen as an opportunity to bring general development benefits,
such as formal education and health care, to otherwise underdeveloped or remote
communities. Similarly, the exploitation of water resources is often more
important for developing economies than the use and needs of environmental
systems. Studies indicate that such priorities are determined by power
inequities, differences of perception in different communities, and competing
socio-cultural needs and water-resources uses.4 The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance
Dam currently being developed on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia is one example
of controversial dam development. The human security dimensions of this
development include impacts of varying magnitudes in the economic, political,
environmental, and socio-cultural spheres.
This paper examines the human security dimensions of the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam development to determine whether this project
is a mechanism for stabilising human security. During five months in 2012, I
collected over fifty-seven field interviews with national and local community
members in Ethiopia and subsequently analysed the data into four sectors of
economic, political, socio-cultural, and environmental importance. I conducted
empirical investigations at the Renaissance Dam site and in villages in the
Blue Nile Valley affected by the dam. Results indicate that questions of social
and development needs, perception, water-resources use, access to economic
opportunities, and time-scale are dependent on the geographic scale and sector
considered. These dependent issues may be visible to policymakers only when
considering a specific scale and specific sector. However, hopes of and
interest in development and change in thegeneral areas of economics, education,
environmental resources use, and health are common factors at national and
local scales. The resulting differences in human security dimensions according
to scale and sector highlight the need for a systemic approach to developing
shared water resources, especially when the resource is shared across cultural
and national borders.
Background
Changes in water resource access, quality, and quantity
have been noted as a key challenge to economic, political, environmental, and
societal stability by several studies.5 Collectively, timely access to, and
safe quality and right quantity of, water resources are one definition of water
security.6 Water security models sometimes include human security components,
and water resources security is arguably a necessary component of stable human
systems. Systems related to individual, national, and international levels of
scale are employed to describe and understand interactions concerning water
resources security, while water resources management naturally lends itself to
multi-scale consideration. Human security scholarship by the Copenhagen School
states that the inclusion of different scales and sectors is important to
understanding security of water resources and climate change.7 Human security
and water security may be seen as interrelated concepts.
At the start of the twenty-first century, human
consumption constituted 54 per cent of all available renewable water resources
and, with population growth, this percentage is projected to increase to 70 per
cent by 2025 and to 90 per cent by 2030.8 These consumption figures do not
represent total potential demand as more than 1.2 billion people lack access to
safe drinking water.9 Before 1950 there were five thousand large-scale dams
worldwide, by 2000 this number stood at more than forty-five thousand, and by
2006, five thousand more had been constructed to bring the total to over fifty
thousand large-scale dams.10 The use of water resources is divided between
ecosystem, domestic, subsistence, municipal, agricultural, industrial, energy,
cultural, and commercial demands, and is often allocated according to political
interests. But these water resource allocations are threatened by contamination,
climate change, groundwater exhaustion, uncoordinated and unsustainable
development, imbalances of political power, lack of stewardship, and aging or
inadequate delivery and treatment infrastructure. Moreover, rising demand is
coupled with an estimated 2.4 billion people who lack access to proper
sanitation.11 Adding to this existing complexity, climate change may further
stress water resource systems. Given current conditions, we are approaching a
scenario where available water resources will not meet projected demands.
Countries that are not well-developed or industrialised
have untapped natural resources in the form of water, minerals, forests,
plants, animals, and land. The global market has room to exploit any of these
resources. The resurgence of current dam development is due to several
simultaneous factors, including: the need for reliable electricity for economic
development; flood control; potential fluctuations in water resources due to
localised climate change; the large potential of hydropower in underdeveloped
river basins; the eagerness of emerging economies to avail themselves of the
hydropower expertise of Brazil and China; population pressures; the quest for
non-carbon-contributing forms of energy development; and the desire of poor countries
to develop through all available means. In the case of Ethiopia and the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, several of these factors were contributory to the
project.
International Significance
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam generated
international media coverage during the summer of 2013 because of unilateral
decisions by the Ethiopian government regarding development of the
transboundary Blue Nile River. These decisions drew protests and calls for
negotiations from the Egyptian government. The Blue Nile basin includes the
countries of Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan. Egypt and Sudan, downstream countries,
depend almost exclusively on Nile River water resources for domestic
consumption, agriculture, industry, power generation, and national economies.12
Most of the water in the basin arrives from the Ethiopian highlands: an
estimated 82–95 per cent of the annual water contribution to the basin comes
from the Blue Nile, Atbara, and Sobat tributaries in Ethiopia. The Blue Nile
River alone accounts for 59–68 per cent of the water flow to the Nile River
basin, depending on Ethiopia’s highland monsoon season.13
The Nile River basin is shared by eleven countries:
Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Eritrea in the eastern part of the basin; Uganda,
the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and
Tanzania in the Equatorial part of the basin. Conflict, cooperation, and
power-relations in the Nile basin have changed markedly over time, but their
historical legacy still affects present-day geopolitics. Contractually, the
countries of the basin, with the exception of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and South Sudan,
are bound by the colonial-era motivated and designed 1929 Nile Treaty, modified
in 1959 by Sudan and Egypt. Under the existing treaty, Egypt and Sudan divide
the Nile water rights and water allocation between them. They have the right to
develop these water resources within the bounds of their specified allocation.
They also claim the right to legal recourse over the development plans of
upstream countries in the Great Lakes region.14 The treaty was designed before
many of the riparian countries were independent states. In the decades since
the treaty update of 1959, changes in politics, security, economics,
populations, globalised practices, and the development drive of the riparian
countries have combined to put pressure on the Nile River water resources.
International attention has turned towards the Nile River
basin, where unrealised hydropower potential has the capacity to alleviate
growing development needs in upstream countries. The scope of hydropower
development has captured the imagination and subsequent action of governments,
donor and lending agencies, and private industry. Aside from Kenya and Egypt,
the Nile basin countries are some of the poorest in the world and are on the
Least Developed Countries list, but this is changing. The Grand Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam is one of many water development projects planned for the
basin.
In 1999, basin countries formed the Nile Basin Initiative
that has succeeded in bringing them together in dialogue, inspiring the
drafting of the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) in 2007. But little to
nothing has been done as yet on ecological or social development. The CFA aims
to replace the existing Nile Treaty with a more equitable and reflective
water-sharing agreement. Once the CFA is ratified, the Nile River Commission
will be established to coordinate plans for developing Nile basin water
resources in upstream countries.15 The Renaissance Dam project is poised to
move this process along. Ethiopia ratified the CFA in June 2013.
Ethiopia
Since 2005, the Ethiopian government has moved its
attention away from inter- and intra-national conflict and towards national
economic development. The national economy has seen annual growth of 8 per cent
and 10 per cent in recent years, though it is still largely dependent on agriculture.
The population in Ethiopia doubled between 1990 and 2010 to exceed eighty
million people. Ethiopia’s growing economy and population, coupled with
widespread poverty, have resulted in an increasing demand for development, and
specifically, for energy. The formal government vision, the Goals and
Transformation Plan (GTP), identifies several development initiatives to lift
the population at large out of poverty before 2025, including an increase of
domestic clean-energy electricity generation to 10,000 MW.16 The Renaissance
Dam is presently part of the GTP.
During interviews with officials and professionals in
Addis Ababa and at the Renaissance Dam site, the following information was
communicated regarding the project. The Renaissance Dam costs are in excess of
US$4 billion. To date, funds have been generated through domestic bond-selling
and donations from the Ethiopian people both at home and abroad. The dam site
is located less than twenty kilometres from the Sudanese border. The resulting
reservoir will contain approximately sixty billion cubic metres of water, a
volume twice that of Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia and source of the
Blue Nile. Construction began in the autumn of 2011. Development related to the
dam includes the construction of bridges and roads, electricity grids, and the
expansion of towns with facilities for the displaced communities. Approximately
twenty thousand people will be displaced by the dam project. About five
thousand employees of the dam live onsite and this number will increase to
twelve thousand at the peak of construction. The Ethiopian Electric Power
Company (EEPCO), the organisation that administers all of Ethiopia’s hydropower
generating facilities, manages the project.
Interviews at EEPCO indicated that the Renaissance Dam
will have an installed generating capacity of 6,000 MW—sixteen turbines with
375 MW capacity each. Initial generation is planned for as early as 2014, with
completion of the entire project targeted for 2017. Ethiopia aspires to be the
green-energy hub of East Africa. In furtherance of this aim, EEPCO has already
signed contracts with Kenya, Djibouti, South Sudan, and Sudan regarding the
sale of electricity. Dams and alternative energy-generating schemes are being
developed across the country, to include solar, wind, and geothermal power, as
well as the construction by a Chinese firm of transmission lines to convey the
electricity. Eighty million Ethiopians have only 2,000 MW in a grid that covers
less than 48 per cent of the country. In 1991, there was only about 200 MW
online. The reservoir will have a five-kilometre buffer zone to mitigate the
risk of an increase in malaria.
In meetings at the Ministry of Water and Energy, I was
informed that the Blue Nile accounts for close to 50 per cent of all surface
freshwater resources within Ethiopia, but to date has remained domestically
underdeveloped. There is currently no comprehensive integrated water-resources
management plan for the Blue Nile basin, nor adequate monitoring infrastructure,
though erosion-prevention efforts and small-scale irrigation projects are
managed through the federal ministries, local governments, and international
development organisations. A US Bureau of Reclamation survey conducted in the
1950s found that the Blue Nile has the potential to provide about 10,000 MW of
hydropower generated through a series of dams. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance
Dam is the first such dam attempted, though rescaled through subsequent
assessments.
The Blue Nile River Valley
The site of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is
located approximately 700 km from Addis Ababa and 20 km from the Sudanese
border in the Blue Nile River Valley. The location is remote, and because of
the conditions of the roads, it takes more than seventeen hours to arrive from
Addis or five hours from the nearest large town, Assosa. The two roads leading
to the project site are not paved and require four-wheel drive or
high-clearance vehicles. There are two bridges; one, called the Chinese bridge,
will be lost in the reservoir; the other will remain, just downstream of the
dam. There is no electricity in the nearby villages and very little in the way
of permanent infrastructure.
The region is sparsely populated, mainly by the Gumuz and
Berta ethnic groups as well as relocated Amhara. Approximately twenty thousand
people will be relocated because of the dam. Most of the people living in the
valley are subsistence farmers, fishermen, and hunters. The relocated Amhara
run small shops catering for the local communities and project employees. There
is one town, downstream of the dam site, and several sizable villages upstream;
in between, there are dozens of small family settlements. The area is affected
by malaria. The Ethiopian government supplies free nets and medicine for the
treatment of the disease. Since work on the dam began, a new clinic at the site
provides free health services to the local communities.
The valley is a transitional climate as the topography
slopes from the river gorge in the Ethiopian highlands to the lowland desert in
Sudan. Temperatures can exceed 40 degrees Celsius in the dry season. EEPCO
conducted both an environmental and social-impact assessment to catalogue the
people and species in the area. The thorough social-impact assessment was carried
out by EEPCO employees while the environmental assessment was conducted by an
outside contractor and was, at the time of my reading it, incomplete.
The Blue Nile River is heavily laden with silt and brown
in colour. This silt results from heavy erosion in the Ethiopian highlands.
Despite government-driven efforts to mitigate erosion, there is high loss of
topsoil to the river because of deforestation, overgrazing, and soil compaction
from livestock and weather combined with the steep slopes of the highlands.
Erosion has caused siltation problems at Sudan’s Roseires dam and irrigation
network just downstream of the Renaissance development site. Commissioned in
1966, the Roseires dam accounts for some 75 per cent of the electricity
generated in Sudan. Recent efforts to mitigate erosion involved a heightening
of the dam by ten feet; the consequent expansion of the impoundment reservoir
saw the displacement of an additional 110,000 local residents. When silt
collects behind a hydropower dam, it can impair its generating capacity by
displacing water, reducing the potential hydrologic head (or power of the water
flow), and damaging the turbines and infrastructure. Dredging is often used to
solve the problem; sometimes the dam itself is modified, as in the case of
Roseires, though this is very expensive.
Discussion
Assessments of the human, socio-economic, and
environmental impact of dam development vary according to who and what are
considered, as well as the time duration in question. In this paper, the “who”
is determined by the geographic scale of a community and whether that community
is directly or indirectly dependent on the water resources. The “what” is
determined by the sector of the overall system in society or the environment
connected to the water resources. Sectors in this case include economic,
political, environmental, and socio-cultural systems. The various time-scales
cover short-, mid-, or long-term costs and benefits to the sector and the
community in question. Dam development may either threaten or stabilise human
security.
National-level interviews were conducted in English with
individuals mostly located in Addis Ababa, but also in Sodo-Walayta, Gondor,
and Bahir Dar. Respondents were identified by occupation or as opportunity
offered. Local-level interviews were conducted through a Gumuz- and
Amharic-language translator in eleven communities affected by dam development.
Some respondents had already been relocated downstream because of the footprint
of the project camp. Additional data was collected from official documents,
project reports, websites, news reports, visits to the dam site, and general
empirical observation.
National Level
The general responses of the national-level interviewees
were concerned with economic, socio-cultural, and political issues. The
economic need for development is interwoven with the socio-cultural need to
overcome poverty, and both of these issues are bound up with Ethiopia’s
geopolitical power in the region, and the political will of the government. The
respondents’ interviews included consideration of relations with Egypt and
Sudan as part of the historical context of the decision to undertake the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, as well as the state of Ethiopian domestic
affairs.
Two important themes dominated the interviews conducted
in Addis Ababa and Sodo-Walayta: that Ethiopia is a poor country that needs
development, and that the dam is important to Ethiopia’s identity and national
mood. “We have the right to use this water,” one interviewee said. “Egypt has
capitalised on the fertile soils of Ethiopia and the water that originates in
our country, but we as Ethiopians have not had this opportunity to develop,
until now.” The general attitude nationwide in Ethiopia is of the need for the
country to develop out of poverty. Some interviewees were explicit that this
development should not occur at the expense of downstream neighbours. Most
interviewees believed that electricity was key to development. “Reliable
electricity is necessary to attract investment, to build industry,” stated one
respondent. “You will find that 99.9 per cent of Ethiopians are for this dam,
regardless of their ethnicity or politics,” one representative of civil society
assured me. Ethiopians are keen to move their country’s identity away from the
famines of the 1970s and 1980s, from reliance on the donor community, and
towards self-sufficiency. Respondents were also emphatic about the contribution
that each Ethiopian is making to the dam project, from farmers to businessmen.
National-level respondents tended to minimise the
importance of the environment and of local communities in considering the
impact of the dam. Many people assured me that the Blue Nile River Valley,
where the dam development site is located, is a barren land. Others minimised
the negative impact on local communities, stating that the traditional ethnic
groups living there are sparsely settled and need development assistance. Most
respondents stated that both the environment and local residents would benefit
from the dam. The establishment of a reservoir in a location with monsoon
pulses in the river would possibly create abundant habitat for animals and
birds, and a reliable source of water for local communities to fish and farm.
Three respondents expressed concerns over a potential increase in water-borne
disease in an already malarial region. Another raised the question of whether
the dam would change the poorly understood migratory patterns of aquatic
species. And many other respondents voiced worries about unsolved erosion
problems upstream.
Domestically, the dam project is perceived as a unifying
force across ethnically diverse and divided Ethiopia. (However, two respondents
voiced one possible drawback: that the dam may become a political and strategic
target in times of war.) In the short term, the Renaissance Dam may further the
political goal of unification; in the mid term, it may meet the economic goals
of income-generation and domestic electricity supply, and also offer
socio-cultural benefits such as general development and poverty alleviation, if
profits from the international sale of electricity are well-managed and
equitably distributed; the unknown environmental costs will be long-term. In my
opinion, the environmental costs will be high for Ethiopia, although the impact
may be lower or even beneficial for the watershed. The benefits could include
control of siltation and flooding, but also the storage of water in an area
with lower evaporation rates than those in Sudan and Egypt.
Local Level
Local-level respondents were concerned with
environmental, socio-cultural, and economic issues. The key finding from
analysis of local-level interviews is that the river system and its tributaries
represent the sole source of economic activity for local people, the centre of
their culture, identity, and society. Most respondents understood that the dam
project meant they had to move, but they expressed a desire to remain close to
the water so as to be able to continue their way of life as fishermen, farmers,
and collectors of gold. Local responses did not evince national or
international perspectives. The local respondents are mainly subsistence
farmers, with the exception of shopkeepers in larger villages who are not of
Gumuz ethnicity and who have come from other parts of Ethiopia. Besides
detailing how the use of water resources varies according to the rainy or dry
seasons, many local people expressed the hope that the dam project would bring
their children access to adequate healthcare facilities and education, even if
they themselves had little to no formal education. Though some respondents felt
that the project was initiated for the benefit of the Gumuz people, and were
quite excited about possible new opportunities, some did not have a clear idea
of what to expect from the project or why it was happening on the river. Almost
all expressed the hope that they would be able to use water in the future for
small-scale irrigation and fishing. When I asked who used the river and related
resources, I was repeatedly told that only the Gumuz people did so, but that
anyone was welcome to come and fish or pan for gold if they knew how. No
acknowledgement was made that the project was a use of the river. Information
local respondents have is given to them through village council meetings or by
word of mouth.
Local-level respondents explained that the seasonal
levels of the Blue Nile dictate what types of crops are farmed and where; the
types and amount of fish caught; the availability of places for gold-panning;
and the ability to cross the river for market trade. Local communities use
flood-recession agriculture in the dry season and rain-fed agriculture in the
rainy season. Respondents cannot imagine a life without the river. “Everything
that we need is in this river”; “All of my life is here, in the river”; “The
river is like our second God, because it gives us everything we need for
living.” These are just some of the strong expressions of local connection to
the river.
Most respondents are willing to relocate, but do not want
to move far from the new reservoir. Many of the men intend to fish in the
reservoir. Almost all of the respondents look forward to the development
opportunities they believe it will bring, including education, access roads and
bridges, and healthcare clinics. Some respondents told me of benefits it had
already brought, such as the new road, new bridge, and free clinic at the dam
site. One woman I spoke with had already been relocated downstream; she said
she was thankful that the project had moved her family to a new place and given
her a newtukul—the simple house, round in shape, in which most rural Ethiopian
people live, with a dirt floor, mud and straw walls, and thatched roof.
Typically, tukuls must be rebuilt every few years; they are not permanent
structures. The only problem she was experiencing was clarifying what land was
hers along the riverbed for planting. The Gumuz people, as subsistence farmers
on seasonally variable rivers, tend to have more than one planting spot—one for
the dry season, and one for the wet season—but there is no formal
land-ownership process.
In general, respondents understand that things will
change because of the dam. Most felt optimistic about perceived new
opportunities and flexible about relocation. Politically, the local-level
respondents did not mention Egypt or Sudan, but did express a trust in the
Ethiopian government’s plans. The environment is not a separate entity from
their lives, but the centre, and changes to the environment will have long-term
effects on cultural activities and livelihoods. The period of adjustment
following relocation from the river into centralised villages will also have
short- and mid-term socio-cultural consequences. When the reservoir is flooded,
gold-panning and flood-recession farming will cease because these are done on
the riverbanks. Local people are aware that the environmental system is poised
for change with the dam, but are open to using the water in a different way
with the government’s help. The local economic sector is in greatest jeopardy
in the short term, but the situation can be eased by federal government efforts
to retrain locals in new agricultural and fishing practices.
Conclusion
The case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
demonstrates the complexity of the challenges that dam development presents for
human security at different scales and in different sectors. The interviews
reveal differing attitudes depending on respondents’ geography in relation to
the river, their dependence on the river, and individual or community
priorities. Dam development creates changes that are not necessarily beneficial
to related human and environmental systems. In fact, water development usually
results in a multiplicity of unforeseen changes as well as predicted and
regrettable shifts in the mid and long term. Rivers are dynamic systems, and
the surface water that we can see and use is only part of the entire water in a
river system. Rivers are connected with climate, precipitation, ground water,
and ultimately (in many cases) the ocean. The hydrology can be extremely
temporal, express a pulse, change course and flow according to physical
precipitation or climatic events, or to changes in ground water. Rivers host a
myriad of biologically dependent systems, and also affect non-biological
systems. The latter include economic, political, environmental, and
socio-cultural systems. In the case of local communities, the river can play
the central role in their society, culture, and economy. Forcing change,
through development, can result in immeasurable and unforeseen changes to these
dependent or affected systems, unless the systems are resilient and adaptive.
But, even the most resilient and adaptive systems have a tipping point—the
point at which a system is irreversibly altered into a new state—and this is
largely unpredictable. Resulting change can be a cost or benefit, depending on
the system and the scale considered.
On an international scale, the Grand Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam has the opportunity to stabilise human security in the
economic, political, and socio-cultural sectors. This is possible if Nile basin
countries cooperate on basin-wide development plans aimed at using water
resources for agriculture and electricity generation, and at connecting energy
and transportation networks. The project may set a precedent in the basin, one
that transcends the limitations of the established Nile Treaty which confines
water rights to Egypt and Sudan, and that allows upstream countries the right
to develop domestic water resources. There is potential for cooperation on
joint development projects for flow management, sediment control, and the
establishment of a more extensive regional electricity grid. Flow management
brings the benefits of flood control, reduction in evaporation losses, and the
prevention of sediment build-up in downstream reservoirs behind the Rosaries,
Merowe, and High Aswan dams. Given the existing infrastructural alterations on
the Blue Nile downstream, it is not clear how the Renaissance Dam could
significantly alter ecosystems downstream of Sudan’s Blue Nile state. More
research is needed on the local communities and ecosystems in this largely
undocumented stretch of the Blue Nile River. There is also the possibility that
the Renaissance Dam could provoke conflict if basin countries do not work
together, if Ethiopia continues to act unilaterally, and if shared benefits are
not well understood or recognised.
On a national scale, the Renaissance Dam has the
potential to stabilise human security in Ethiopia. The dam’s hydroelectric
potential can triple the current megawattage available to the domestic grid;
the project itself has eased ethnic divisions to create a pan-Ethiopian sense
of self; and it may enhance the economic development that Ethiopia is
experiencing in the absence of internal and external conflict. The Renaissance
Dam is one step on the way to fulfilment of Ethiopia’s aim of becoming
economically self-sufficient. However, it represents a loss and destabilising
factor to human security in the environmental sector, the extent of which is
currently unknown. This environmental cost may become an economically
destabilising factor if erosion continues unabated to shorten the lifespan of
the dam’s production. The Ethiopian government is currently devising a basin-wide
approach to watershed management that has the potential to address erosion
concerns. The dam could also reduce human security in the area of human health
via a potential rise in malaria. At present, malaria is a seasonal problem in
the basin, and people live in scattered settlements, which inhibits the spread
of disease. Resettlement plans will concentrate people together in new
settlements and water will be present year-round, creating a double risk of an
increase in malaria regardless of the Ethiopian government’s supplying of free
nets and medicine and its plans to establish a five-kilometre buffer around the
reservoir.
On a local scale, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
could stabilise human security in the economic and socio-cultural sectors. The
development brought by the project will offer new opportunities to local
communities in the form of access to markets, education, and healthcare. The
resettlement plans include the provision of permanent structures such as
schools and clinics, supplied with water and electricity. But the development
could also destabilise economic and socio-cultural human security. Local
communities will lose their traditional livelihoods of flood-recession farming,
gold-panning, and fishing in the river. The current local use of water
resources has been sustainable for generations, an example of long-term use.
Local dwellers just over the border in Sudan are also an unknown factor.
Research is needed to determine how many people currently rely on subsistence
practices and the measures necessary to help these communities adapt to
regulated flow regimes and other disruptions of flood-recession farming and/or
river fishing. The environmental sector will be completely altered on a local
scale. How this will affect ecosystems reliant upon cyclical water-flow
patterns is unknown. Environmental costs could be mitigated by creating a
conservation zone around the reservoir that makes exception for the existing
communities. To address problems of erosion and siltation, a basin-wide
strategy of erosion prevention and reforestation could be introduced and
sediment gates installed at the base of the dam.
In order for dam development to maximise benefits and
minimise costs to human security on the local, national, and international scales,
dam development could be managed in line with the systemic and complex approach
exemplified in this study. This requires that each sector and scale be
considered separately for a comprehensive set of possible solutions to
potential costs and to understand how and when each sector is dependent upon
another. In the case of internationally shared rivers, and even culturally
shared rivers, an emphasis on cooperation, planning, and benefit-sharing across
scales, communities, and sectors, is vital to human security and multi-scale
stability.
ENDNOTES
1. World Commission on Dams, Dams and Development: A New
Framework for Decision-Making (London: Earthscan, 2000).
2. See, for example, Brian D. Richter et al., “Lost in
Development’s Shadow: The Downstream Human Consequences of Dams”, Water
Alternatives 3, no. 2 (June 2010), pp. 14–42; and Deborah Moore, John Dore, and
Dipak Gyawali, “The World Commission on Dams + 10: Revisiting the Large Dam
Controversy”, Water Alternatives 3, no. 2 (June 2010), pp. 3–13.
3. Richter et al., “Lost in Development’s Shadow”.
4. Jessica Budds and Gordon McGranahan, “Are the Debates
on Water Privatization Missing the Point? Experiences from Africa, Asia, and
Latin America”, Environment and Urbanization 15, no. 2 (October 2003), pp.
87–114; Erik Swyngedouw, “Power, Nature, and the City: The Conquest of Water
and the Political Ecology of Urbanization in Guayaquil, Ecuador: 1880–1990”,
Environment and Planning A 29, no. 2 (1997), pp. 311–32; and Alex Loftus,
“Rethinking Political Ecologies of Water”, Third World Quarterly 30, no. 5
(2009), pp. 953–68.
5. See, for example, Jennifer C. Veilleux, Matthew
Zentner, and Aaron T. Wolf, “The Relationship between Freshwater Resources,
Socio-Cultural Dynamics, and Geopolitical Stability”, United States
Geospatial-Intelligence Monograph I, Washington, D.C., forthcoming.
6. Jacob D. Petersen-Perlman et al., “Case Studies on
Water Security: Analysis of System Complexity and the Role of Institutions”,
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education 149, no. 1 (December
2012), pp. 4–12.
7. Barry Buzan, “Losing Control: Global Security in the
Twenty-First Century”,International Affairs 77, no. 3 (2001), p. 696.
8. Karin M. Krchnak, “A Freshwater Action Agenda for
Johannesburg”, Environmental Change Security Project Report, no. 8 (summer
2002), pp. 21–4.
9. Peter H. Gleick, Ashbindu Singh, and Hua Shi,
“Emerging Threats to the World’s Freshwater Resources”, a Report of the Pacific
Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, Oakland,
California, 2001.
10. Richter et al., “Lost in Development’s Shadow”.
11. Aaron T. Wolf, Shira B. Yoffe, and Mark Giordano,
“International Waters: Identifying Basins at Risk”, Water Policy 5, no 1
(2003), pp. 29–60.
12. Ana Elisa CascĂŁo, “Political Economy of Water
Resources Management and Allocation in the Eastern Nile River Basin” (Ph.D.
dissertation, Department of Geography, King’s College London, 2009).
13. Ashok Swain, “Challenges for Water Sharing in the
Nile Basin: Changing Geo-Politics and Changing Climate”, Hydrological Sciences
Journal 56, no. 4 (2011), pp. 687–702.
14. Ibid.
15. Alan Nicol and Ana Elisa CascĂŁo, “Against the Flow:
New Power Dynamics and Upstream Mobilisation in the Nile Basin”, Review of
African Political Economy 38, no. 128 (2011), pp. 317–25.
16. Ethiopian Ministry of Finance, Goals and
Transformation Plan: 2010/11–2014/15(Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Ministry of Finance
and Economic Development, November 2010)
[http://www.mofed.gov.et/English/Resources/Documents/GTP%20English2.pdf].
Source: jveilleux.blogspot.com
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