ABSTRACT
The announcement by the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in early 2011 that the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) should be constructed on the Blue Nile ignited severe tension and debates with Ethiopia’s old adversary Egypt. The incoming Morsi government in Egypt was later recorded suggesting various belligerent acts to stop the dam from being built (Kimenyi and Mbaku, 2015). It was not until March 2015 that Ethiopia reached an agreement with its Blue Nile riparian neighbours Sudan and Egypt to at least jointly study the effects of the dam further. However, despite all the rhetoric around the GERD, it has been argued that the dam brings benefits to all three riparian states, and creates a win-win situation between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, if agreement is reached on the distribution of water during the period when the dam is filled up and during periods of drought. The benefits to Sudan and Egypt are considered to be multiple, such as silt reduction and prolonged life of downstream dams (e.g. Sudan’s Roseires and Egypt’s Aswan High Dam), less flooding problems and increased production capacity of downstream hydropower schemes due to increased regularity of water flows (Whittington et al., 2014) and potentially increased electricity access for Sudan in particular. Against this backdrop, the current developments of irrigation schemes along the Blue Nile (also known as the Abay, meaning father) and in the Lake Tana area have received less hydropolitical attention. Irrigation schemes are particularly contributing to water consumption, leading to reduced water flows downstream. Should the number and extent of irrigation schemes increase in upstream riparian countries, transforming the ‘blue’ water of the Blue Nile into ‘green’ water (water stored in the soil that evaporates or transpires through agricultural crops and plants), this would potentially be more problematic to Egypt and its access to Nile water than yet another hydroelectric dam. Hydropower utilizes the fall of the water, but does not necessarily reduce the amount of water in the river, except for the losses of water due to increased evaporation in the reservoir.1
