ABSTRACT
Drawing on literature on benefit-sharing on transboundary rivers, the chapter discusses whether the Grant Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and the 2015 Declaration of Principles (DoP) have transformed the hydropolitical interactions in the Eastern Nile from a dispute around sharing water to the discussion of sharing benefits. It finds that while Ethiopia and Sudan expect the GERD’s benefits accruing from increased power production and power trade for Ethiopia and expanding irrigated agriculture for Sudan, Egypt is concerned about the project’s impact on what it considers its historical share. Several challenges are expected to face current and future negotiations on the GERD’s filling and operation strategies, including defining whether to start from current uses or equitable and reasonable utilisation (which also include potential uses), determining what constitutes significant harm, and delineating the powers of the coordinating mechanism on the annual operation of the GERD with downstream reservoirs. Sharing the costs of the annual operation and maintenance of the project and broadening the range of benefits by cooperation on projects on and beyond the river could induce the three countries to offer compromises in the negotiations. The chapter concludes that the GERD and the DoP have not transformed the hydropolitical interactions in the Eastern Nile from sharing water to sharing benefits, but rather to negotiating both issues simultaneously.
