Volume 4, Number 4

The Nile River as A Potential Progenitor of War or Cooperation: The
Case of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)

  Authors

Chimdessa Fekadu Tsega, Wollega University School of Law, Ethiopia

  Abstract

More than half of the world population lives in internationally shared river basins. Shared waters could be either a source of conflict or a source of cooperation and prosperity. Today, the growing need for water resources for development has brought intense political and economic tensions among the countries that share rivers that flow across two or more countries. The disagreements among the riparian States of the Nile River on sharing the resources of the basin represent the challenge of governance over shared resources. This challenge has intensified with Ethiopia’s construction of dam that is believed to impact the status quo in terms of benefits from the river. This article highlights the dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt surrounding the construction of the dam and forwards possible policy solutions on enhancing shared utilization of the Nile River including the benefits from the hydroelectric power to be generated from the dam.

  Keywords

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Nile River, Ethiopia, Egypt, International rivers