Adapting to Climate Change: Transboundary Water Resources

Over the last week, I have been reflecting on the blog series so far and I read that tensions between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia have escalated over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. This made it clear that I had overlooked a key challenge to adaption - the transboundary nature of water resources. In this blog post, I emphasise the need for collective responses to climate change that will support the long-term peaceful and equitable development of the continent.

Transboundary Waters: the Nile Basin 

Just over 90% of surface water resources and basins in Africa are shared between two or more countries (UNDP, 2006). Most notably, the Nile River flows through eleven countries, supports more than 400 million people, and is vital for energy production and sustaining food and water security for both upstream and downstream countries. Riparian countries compete for these crucial water resources leading to conflict and political disagreements. Recently, Egypt and Sudan have challenged Ethiopia’s decision to construct and fill the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Figure 1). Their frustrations have been widely acknowledged in academic literature. This huge project will reduce flow to downstream riparians of the Blue Nile increasing water stress (Hasan and Tarhule, 2020), affect  80% of the water reaching Egypt, and potentially cause severe environmental and social impacts on Kenya’s Lake Turkana. The situation is made more complicated by climate change. Against a backdrop of existing high levels of variability, a study in Nature Climate Change reports that climate change will enhance the interannual variability of the Nile river flow. This essentially means flow will become more unpredictable and the basin will experience an increased likelihood of droughts and floods. Therefore, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam highlights that one country's adaptation to climate change may exacerbate problems for other riparian countries and impede their climate resilience. Goulden et al. (2010) suggest that in dealing with these climate-related risks, treaties are needed to allocate water resources, develop cross-boundary knowledge, and support cooperation. Seems simple right?

Figure 1. Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam - in construction on the Blue Nile. Source: (Reuters, 2019) 

Clearly, there are further challenges to this… 

Although Goulden et al. (2010) acknowledge effective basin-wide institutions and agreements are required – the way forward is extremely challenging. Previous treaties (e.g the Nile Basin Initiative) have demonstrated that in the Nile Basin it’s difficult to get eleven countries, all with competing priorities and interests, to agree on a water-sharing plan. These policies are influenced by the power relationships and politics between riparian states or even, as Tekuya (2020) highlights, colonial histories (Nile Water Treaties). However, aside from hydro-politics,  Hasan et al. (2018) report that the most persistent problem with developing water-sharing agreements is the absence of data. In fact, water scarcity data is often insufficient across major transboundary river basins. Over the last 30 years,  due to funding and maintenance costs, the number of hydrological monitoring stations in the Nile Basin have declined significantly. Without accurate and reliable data, uncertainty exists in the resource and makes it harder to allocate shares. A priority across the Nile Basin (and in other areas of Africa) should be increased monitoring, to support future water planning and technical cooperation between the riparian states. 

Don’t Forget Groundwater! 

As mentioned previously in this blog series, groundwater has historically received less attention than surface water. Yet, more groundwater is expected to be drawn to support rising populations (Cuthbert et al. 2019). Given this importance, estimates of transboundary aquifers are required and are emerging (albeit slowly). Most recently, Altchenko and Villholth (2013) report that there are 80 shared aquifers in the continent, primarily in Western Central Africa and Southern Africa (Figure 2 below). However, less than 10 % of these are subject to specific agreements over research and monitoring. Just as with surface water resources, more must be done to improve monitoring and resource estimates that promote effective transboundary management. Perhaps, it is even more important due to its previous neglect and likely influence in building climate resilience. Voss and Soliman (2013) report that failure to do so may result in unequal and excessive use, which will ultimately reduce the quality of groundwater resources. The Nubian Aquifer System provides a cautionary example. It is a non-renewable water resource across Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan and excessive depletion has been linked to groundwater-quality issues. 

Figure 2. Transboundary aquifers and international river/lake basins in Africa. Source: (Altchenko and Villholth 2013)

Final Thoughts: Data, Data & Data. 

 

Effective basin-wide agreements on transboundary resources are required for the long- term peaceful and equitable development of the continent. However, across both groundwater and surface water resources one of the persistent problems is limited monitoring infrastructure and the sharing of this data. An improved monitoring network will promote confidence in treaties that govern the future allocation of increasingly stressed water resources under climate change.