Browsing by Subject "water politics"

This piece of research scrutinizes the relationship between the Grand Renaissance Dam project and the struggling Nile cooperation. It incorporates the themes of transboundary river disputes and power asymmetries within regional cooperation into a qualitative case study in order to achieve a better understanding of the hydro-political situation at the Nile Basin. It approaches the issue through qualitative content analysis of 35 interviews and uses the framework of hydro-hegemony as a theoretical explanatory tool to help in the analysis of its findings. The study analyses the different issues, processes and dynamics related to the Dam project through the different factors of presented in the framework of hydro-hegemony and counter hegemonic act presented by Mark Zeitoun and Ana Cascao. The framework states that the balance of power is the factor that ultimately determines how the riparian states interact over shared resource. The framework assumes that the overall goal of each riparian is to maximize their objectives with the certain resource through control. The control can be achieved through different and strategies. The study confirms the current view rising from the recent research literature that the Nile river basin offers an example of hydro-hegemonic power structures in a transboundary river context. There is a clear asymmetry in power relations between the riparian states which can be seen in power dynamics and in all the aspects of cooperation. The outcome of hydro-hegemony at the Nile basin can be seen in the tension between the riparian states and unequal water distribution. The most downstream riparian state Egypt has been able to establish a consolidated control over the waters of the Nile for decades but through the political changes in the region the control has been contested. One of the main results of this study is to give confirmation to the view that the hydropolitical relations at the basin are in constant transformation mostly due to the increased the bargaining power of the upstream riparian states. At the moment three main challenges are characterizing the Nile cooperation. Firstly the question of CFA was seen by most of the informants as one of the main challenges in the Nile cooperation. Secondly the issue of water allocations was brought up as the most difficult matter to solve before reaching an agreement. Thirdly the environment of mistrust and misknowledge is seen as seriously hindering the cooperation. In addition to the factors which are challenging and hindering the Nile cooperation, the study presented other types of developments which describe the current state of the Nile cooperation. Those observations can be summarized to five factors which are: change in regional power dynamics, the rise of emerging new actors, the frustration of the traditional international donors, clear upstream vs. downstream dualism and the rise of unilateral action. This study states that the main challenges of the Nile cooperation are the main points of contradiction also in the case of the Grand Renaissance Dam project. It concludes that before reaching a permanent legal and institutional framework to the region the issue of water security and water allocations must be redefined and the lack of trust between the countries must be alleviated.