Management of Conflicts over Transboundary Water Resources: Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Blue Nile Basin

Abstract

How do riparian states manage water conflicts? Why countries in some river basins have been able to effectively manage the conflict whilst the riparians of the Blue Nile Basin failed to do so? These are the main questions this paper dealt with. Most scholars on water conflict disproportionately focused on the possibility of water war or cooperation among the riparians of the transboundary rivers, by adopting narrow theoretical frameworks, which resulted in the scant exploration of low-intensity water conflict. In short, the existing methodology is inadequate in explaining issues about water interactions among the riparians of the transboundary rivers and the dynamics of hydro politics.  By applying a ‘richer view of law and politics’, this paper seeks to examine the theories, concepts, and strategies on the management of conflicts arising from the use of transboundary water resources, with a particular emphasis on the Blue Nile Basin.  Accordingly, the paper argues that effective management of water conflicts depends, inter alia, on the power asymmetry among the Riparian States, the existence of and the extent to which the emerging water use norms are entrenched into the legal framework and state practices, the relative strength of and the mandate bestowed upon institutions regulating the Basin, and the level of convergence (divergence) of state identities and interests of the Riparian States. More particularly, within the Blue Nile Basin, Egypt has been able to establish and maintain an unstable hydro-hegemony in the Blue Nile Basin. To this end, it relied, among others, on colonial treaties, informal institutions, containment strategies such as international financial institutions, the discourse of ‘historic rights´, and the securitization of the river. Over the last three decades,  however, the upper riparian countries (mainly Ethiopia) have started challenging the Egyptian hegemony by using various counterhegemonic strategies, mainly through the combination of legal and political mechanisms and noticeably, following the construction of the GERD. It further asserts that the management of conflict between Ethiopia and Egypt has become intractable owing to the competing norms, incompatible state identity, and securitization of the Nile, coupled with weak institutions and ineffective conflict management efforts, as evidenced in the protracted negotiation process and the failed US-brokered mediation. It is, therefore, imperative that future Ethiopia-Egypt water conflict management endeavors should take the aforementioned necessary, albeit not sufficient, conditions into account.