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Read aguanomics http://www.aguanomics.com/ for the world’s best analysis of the politics and economics of water The Nile River Basin: Water, Agriculture, Governance and Livelihood is edited by Awulachew, Smakhtin, Molden and Peden. The 316pp, $135 book has 15 chapters written by 50+ authors. The book is, in other words, a compilation of papers written for three overlapping projects for evaluating the current situation and potential future scenarios for the ten countries that share water in the Nile Basin (NB).[1]
As many of you know, the biggest problem in the NB is the current use of water, with Sudan and Egypt claiming most of the water for their own irrigated agriculture (drinking water and water quality are smaller problems that do not have significant transboundary components). In a reverse of the typical norm of power-politics (e.g., China and the Mekong), these downstream countries have claimed — with success so far — that they are the only ones entitled to NB water. That situation is about to change, as Ethiopia and other countries are now building dams that will hold and use water from the Nile — sometimes for hydropower (meaning a low net reduction of flows due to evaporation behind reservoirs) or for irrigation. This latter use, according to the Egyptians, may increase regional tensions by reducing the water that Egyptian farmers have seen as their right since Aswan High Dam (AHD) went into operation in 1970.
This book delivers partial answers to both sides of this question, falling short mainly due to a lack of integration among chapters (a common problem with collections of papers) and failure to give a full picture of all relevant topics across all relevant places.[2] The book, instead, hits some topics in some places, which makes it hard to see the larger picture or know if the presented material is more or less important than the missing material.
But this figure underlines the basic fact: precipitation less evaporation leaves most of the NB in deficit, and institutions for managing water in the NB — institutions that may have been established in a time of relative water abundance — may not be able to cope with scarcity within countries or allocating transboundary scarcity.
Bottom Line: I give this book THREE stars for people engaged in research in this area. For others, I suggest googling for free academic papers on water, land, power and agriculture in the Nile Basin.
[2] This same critique applies to the book on Land Grabs in Africa in which one of my chapters appears.
[3] My favorite typo was “Discussions and concussions” (probably pretty accurate for some ideas , but there were mistakes in emphasizing GDP (over GDP per capita), assuming that a large economy made investments in agriculture profitable, concluding that “classified wetland” was synonymous with area of environmental vulnerability, etc.
2013-01-10 05:34:52
Source: http://www.aguanomics.com/2013/01/nile-river-basin-review.html