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Ethiopia s Hydro-Hegemony Has Arrived
The dam dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt most often garners international press, but the cases impacting Kenya and Somalia show that the pattern of Ethiopian defiance of international norms cuts deeper.
After initial denials, Ethiopia began last summer to fill its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The Ethiopian project is already four times longer than the Hoover Dam and will become the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa. When filled, its reservoir will have more than twice the volume of Lake Mead. The Ethiopian government justifies the project in power generation and the country’s development. The fact that the dam lies less than ten miles from the Sudanese border and blocks waters upon which both Sudan and Egypt rely for agriculture makes the dam’s construction an international issue.
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Climate change is slowly stamping an imprint on Egypt’s environment, culture, and economy. The most obvious of these challenges is the rising scarcity of water. Egypt is already one of the world’s most water scarce countries; while the UN assesses water scarcity at 1,000 cm3 per person annually, Egypt has less than 560 cm3 per person. Rapid population growth, urbanization, desertification, and unpredictable weather patterns are all taking an unrelenting toll on the country’s strained water resources, while fear is climbing over loss of water from the Nile if the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam holds back water during droughts.