Introduction
The steadily declining waters of Lake Victoria – shared by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and fed by Rwandan and Burundian river systems, link East Africa's great lakes as headwaters of the White Nile. From Lakes Kyoga, and Albert – with its catchment shared with the Democratic Republic of Congo – it flows into Southern Sudan and through the capital city, Juba, continuing north. The Blue Nile rises from Lake Tana and river-fed headwaters in the Ethiopian highlands and Eritrea, descending to a visible confluence with the White Nile in northern Sudan at Omdurman near Khartoum, and the combined waters flow on through Egypt to the great Nile delta in the Mediterranean. With the independence of Southern Sudan in 2011, the Nile river now links 11 countries sharing the basin.1 While water itself remains the most vital, obvious and historically shared resource provided by this massive eco-hydrological system, its largely colonial-era allocation arrangements (including military enforcement) fail to equitably or sustainably address the needs of the growing populations, developing economies, evolving socio-political ecology and climate-related constraints of today's independent riparian states. Whether upstream or downstream, the social and political discourse of security has the potential to either unite or incite, and nowhere is the duality of conflict potential versus cooperation potential more volatile than in the Nile basin in the wake of the independence of Southern Sudan, the Egyptian revolution and wider transitions of the Arab Spring.
This is the right moment to examine over a decade of dialogue and investment (largely from outside the region) in participatory processes as a sort of practical method of building trust, through cooperation in programmes and projects designed to increase shared benefits from the use of Nile basin resources, which have been primarily aimed at building foundations for regional economic interdependence. Yet these processes have been unable to mobilise significant civil society ‘demand’ for cooperation, or to effectively engage the populations of the Nile basin countries in a shared vision sufficient to actually reduce the risks of regional conflict over increasingly scarce natural resources. While the role of Egypt remains pivotal to, and could still trigger dissolution of years of hard-won progress in Nile cooperation, Egypt's revolution reveals latent impetus for the kind of pluralistic engagement required to realign perceptions of national security with a more promising collective human security. This could serve to transition ‘water security’ which from a negotiating standpoint has been termed a ‘non-legal, indeterminate, and potentially disruptive concept’2 (also inherently militaristic) into a broader social and humanitarian discourse in which basin cooperation contributes to comprehensive human security through enhanced food security, health, livelihoods, energy, environmental and social adaptive capacity and resilience. This more integral framing, supported by the collective nature of the growing threats of climate change impacts, could help to constructively refocus a new discourse of the ‘common good’ in the Nile Basin.3 This paper further suggests that emerging trends in wider Islamic dialogue may offer a unique contribution that could help to revitalise a more participative and pluralistic path to cooperation, social and environmental resilience, durable peace and prosperity among all Nile basin riparians.
Two steps forward, three back?
In the wake of strides made in the 1990s, notably in the creation of a regional network of hydrometeorological expertise and a focus on scientific and technical cooperation to improve the fisheries and management of East Africa's great lakes, coupled with a resurgence of interest in strengthening regional economic communities on the African continent, the time was ripe for the Nile basin-wide dialogue process which was to forge a ‘shared vision’ of cooperation. With significant guidance and support from the World Bank, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) was established in 1999 by the Water Affairs ministers of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda (with Eritrea as an observer) as a partnership ‘to achieve sustainable socio-economic development through the equitable utilisation of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources.’4 Implicit was the eventual development of a regional river basin authority, but the lessons of failed ‘top-down’ development initiatives were then fresh, and the NBI championed a balanced approach to implementation of this shared vision through the articulation of an action programme that would build trust through cooperation in the generation of substantial new social and economic benefits (such as power-sharing), to promote regional peace and security. This was driven by an unprecedented level of support from the World Bank,5 which rallied the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the European Union (EU), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and a coalition of international environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as the International Consortium for Cooperation on the Nile (ICCON). Its first convening, in Geneva in 2001, raised US$140 million in initial aid. Basin-wide projects were designed to establish foundations for trust and cooperative action, with two ‘subsidiary’ investment programmes geared respectively to the countries sharing the Blue Nile and to those sharing the East African lakes catchment, both ostensibly to promote economic development and environmental management for the benefit of all the peoples of the Nile Basin.
The ‘shared vision’ of a much broader spectrum of existing and potential benefits, to be realised through a regional programme of actions, was ultimately aimed at building the social and economic infrastructure of interdependence, while at the same time enabling progress towards a negotiated River Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement. This agreement would reflect a functionalist consensus on advancing regional development and security – and thus succeed the fragmented and largely colonial-era water-sharing agreements which can no longer meet the exigencies of the independent states of the basin region today.
Egypt, almost totally dependent on the Nile (which provides 95% of its water needs)6, is experiencing the impacts of a changing climate, including the looming prospect of dramatic declines in Nile delta agriculture due to sea-level rise and saline intrusion, compounded by serious water shortages predicted within the present decade. Under the terms of the 1929 Nile Water Treaty, revised in 1959 with riparians then under British colonial rule, Egypt is guaranteed 55.5 billion cubic metres a year – about two-thirds of about 84 billion cubic metres mean annual flow. Ethiopia is the source of about 85% of this, with the balance draining from the Nile Equatorial lake systems and Sudan's (significantly lesser) quota allocations, which are also maintained under the terms of the colonial treaty. While Egypt has long asserted the Nile to be its primary source of fresh water, in 2010 former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's water minister proclaimed Nile water a matter of ‘life and death’, contrasting Egypt with other Basin states that have ‘plentiful alternative water sources’.7 However, Kenya credits Lake Victoria with more than half of its surface water resources, and lake riparian states share deep concerns about falling water levels which are generally attributed to increased evaporation due to global warming.8
Although historically the most economically powerful Nile state, many Egyptians believe their country to be the most vulnerable to water stress.9 This perceived insecurity has periodically prompted the threat or exercise of military superiority to (successfully) dissuade upstream riparians from challenging Egypt's historical water quotas.10 In addition, this periodic posturing, whether in official pronouncements or with the mobilisation of troops, serves to entrench an unfortunate skewing of public perceptions concerning water security. Water security based on river water flows cannot actually be achieved without managing the hydrological system responsible for the flows in an integrated and sustainable manner. This is really a matter of environmental security. In order to balance the multiple benefits which can be derived from the multiple and potentially conflicting uses of river basin resources, cooperation is required among different users and sectors to fairly meet the needs of all people. Hence the environmental security of the basin as a productive resource system is actually a key element in the collective human security of the people living in and the countries dependent upon the resources of the Nile river system.
The 1994 United Nations Human Development Report defined human security as a concern with human life and dignity – not with weapons (UNDP 1994). The 1999 International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change definition of human security as a flux ‘where people and communities have the capacity to manage stresses to their needs, rights and values’ includes both the root causes of vulnerability and the means to address them (Barnett et al. 2003):
Human security … is achieved when and where individuals and communities have the options necessary to end, mitigate or adapt to threats to their human, environmental, and social rights; have the capacity and freedom to exercise these options; and actively participate in pursuing these options. (cited in Barnett et al. 2003)
Notwithstanding this, Egypt has been an active and committed proponent of the NBI process to achieve a greater common good through collaborative exploitation and distribution of benefits derived from the Nile basin as a common and regenerative resource system. Egypt, with all of the basin states, has also engaged creatively in over a decade of negotiations dedicated to the joint articulation of a Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA). But for a few bracketed words in a single ‘water security’ clause – reserving to Egypt and Sudan the right of veto on any Nile basin projects which could affect the status quo of their quotas – consensus was reached in 2010 on the principles and articles of a draft Cooperative Framework to establish an inclusive legal and institutional transboundary regime. Egypt and Sudan strenuously opposed moving forward until the disputed security clause could be resolved, while the upstream countries argued in favour of moving forward in order not to stall progress in establishing a basin commission (with a legal framework within which the issue could presumably be further deliberated to reach resolution).
In May 2010, seven of the upstream countries decided to open the Agreement on the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework for signature, for a period of one year, until 13 May 2011. The decision was rejected by Egypt and Sudan on the grounds that the NBI States had agreed in previous meetings of the Council of Ministers (NILE-COM) to negotiating rules which specified that a text would be adopted and opened for signature only with consensus of all basin states. Signatories Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya viewed opening of the CFA for signature to be, in the words of the Ethiopian minister, ‘a landmark event, the realization of a goal toward which we all have been working for over a decade now [which] marks the long distance we have cooperatively traversed to reach a level of trust and confidence that has enabled us to achieve a historic Framework Agreement that is fair, benefits all of us, harms none of us and leaves none of us out’ (NBI 2010a). Uganda's minister asserted that ‘considering that all the principles and articles of the draft Cooperative Framework were discussed by the countries and consensus reached on all except for one clause under Article 14b on Water Security it is appropriate that this document is opened for signature to pave the way for establishment of the Nile River Basin Commission’ (ibid.) The alternative proposed by Egypt and Sudan – to move forward on formal establishment of the Nile Basin Commission, and to continue negotiating the terms of the disputed articles of the CFA – was rejected by the upstream countries. Egypt considered the signing by five upstream states of a draft text to be a unilateral action in breach of the agreed NBI procedures and principles, and responded by transferring responsibility for Nile cooperation from the Irrigation and Foreign ministries to the National Security Authority, and reportedly froze all cooperation with the basin countries that signed (Hussein 2010).
The Nile Ministers in charge of Water Affairs from nine basin states convened a month later and agreed to address the request of Egypt and Sudan to discuss the legal and institutional implications of signing the draft CFA. The convening purpose of the meeting, however, was to review progress on NBI activities and approve the work plan and budget for the fiscal year 2010/2011 – which Egypt and Sudan declined to approve. In November 2010 the Nile Basin Trust Fund (NBTF) met to review NBI's progress, both in the implementation of basin activities and towards financial sustainability. With the end of the NBI Institutional Strengthening Project in 2012 approaching, and closure of the Trust Fund in 2013 to follow, Uganda's minister for water and environment alluded to an already perceptible impasse in appealing to NBI's 10 development partners to financially support a revival of confidence-building activities among the NBI member countries.12 The fifth in a Strategic Dialogue series was soon organised ‘to strengthen the engagement between the Nile Technical Advisory Committee members and Development Partners’ and to provide NBI with ‘strategic guidance and technical support on key issues’, indicative of growing anxiety as to the continuation of external financial support, without which the momentum of the CFA is extremely unlikely to be sustainable (NBI 2010b).
One elephant in the room has been the history of Egyptian aggression in response to any perceived threats to its Nile water entitlement. While Egypt is perceived to be prepared to secure its water rights with troops if need be, the relative military might of Egypt could be said to have served well as a deterrent to infringement. Over the decades since Africa's independence era, it would appear to have been particularly effective in deterring Sudan from contemplating any deviation from the status quo. Another pachyderm is the independence of Southern Sudan, which as a new basin state would have been entitled to sign the Agreement while still open for signature until mid May 2011. An analysis commissioned by UNDP and published by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) in December 2010 determined that independent Southern Sudan, with many more pressing issues, could perhaps best take a ‘wait and see’ position to observe for a time how the CFA and NBI processes advance. The SIWI report anticipated a posture of silence in the short term as the best strategy to buy valuable time in order to assess the benefits of alignment with either the downstream or upstream countries. Southern Sudan might benefit from maintaining historical cooperation with Egypt, in particular with respect to possible infrastructure investment in the development of its Nile River resources. On the other hand, Southern Sudan has already established strong ties with the East African Economic Community countries, which are its most important trading partners (Granit et al. 2010).
The risk that could stampede the Nile CFA herd is largely in the hands of Egypt's new government. In hailing a new era of cooperation and a relaxation of tensions with Ethiopia over water quotas (based on promises of Egyptian cooperation in a major Ethiopian dam project which has for all intents and purposes bypassed the CFA), Egypt's water minister was reported on 3 May 2011 to have said that ‘we can expect increased cooperation between Egypt and Ethiopia in all areas’ and that ‘Egypt is concerned not to refuse any project that is in the benefit of Ethiopian and the other Nile Basin countries as long as such projects do not negatively affect its water quota’ (Ahramonline 2011). This would seem to be an invitation to join and reinforce a downstream coalition of CFA-spurners, who implicitly agree to solidarity in maintaining status quo flow quotas. The implied rewards would be Egyptian support for projects which might benefit Ethiopia, Sudan, or Southern Sudan – while protecting Egypt's existing water quotas from renegotiation. The benefits to Southern Sudan in particular of trade and cooperation with the upstream East African basin countries may risk being manipulated into competition with a downstream coalition (Nicol and Cascão 2011). This manner of factionalising could seriously erode the fragile foundations for basin-wide cooperation which the 10 Nile basin countries have managed to achieve, with significant international assistance, in over a decade of joint work.
In welcoming a European Commission delegation on 4 May 2011 to the NBI secretariat in Entebbe, the NBI executive director (a rotational position held by Dr. Wael Khairy of Egypt) pleaded with the European Commission to continue to provide financial and technical support to the NBI beyond the end of its Trust Fund in 2013, noting that:
The current political context has slowed the pace of the technical track of the NBI including the progress of activities, the implementation of the NBI programs and projects, as well as the NBI operation, contractual commitments of several consultants contracts . . . and the rift among the riparian countries has also affected the execution of the Subsidiary Action Programs particularly at the Eastern Nile. (NBI 2011b)
Listening to the discourse in the basin
The focus of this paper is on a new avenue of pluralistic discourse that could at once derive lessons from the fragility of the current state of Nile cooperation, and also help to open space for a more inclusively pluralistic platform to forge new alliances. There is a need to effect coherence among different constituencies facing seemingly disparate yet interlinked threats to human security, many of which can best be managed through coordination, cooperation, and collaboration at the scale of the shared hydrographic system – yet if mismanaged will assuredly aggravate instability, insecurity and human suffering throughout the basin for decades to come.
The clear and present need for joint efforts to increase stakeholder participation as a means to enhance cooperation along the Nile was highlighted in a January 2010 regional multi-stakeholder forum, co-organised by NBI with the Nile Basin Discourse (NBD)13 and the Global Water Partnership (GWP).14 Priority development needs that can be met through cooperation and shared benefits were identified: challenges to policy and practice; opportunities for cooperation in the management of Nile Basin resources; the need for shared plans and strategies to come to terms with the priority challenges of climate change and development. These are certainly pragmatic issues around which cooperation has and can certainly be further rallied. Given the fragility of NBI, at a time when donors may be reluctant to step up without a clear path through the political stalemate (which is blocking progress towards the establishment of a basin commission), an intentional strategy to eschew the political arena may be the best way to revive the shared vision approach. It is important to avoid situations where no one can back down without losing face. In the words of Ethiopia's water minister ‘a treaty cannot be unsigned’ (Lirri 2011) – and a government which has characterised its non-signature as a matter of national security cannot risk the political fallout of appearing to give in. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that another perspective altogether may be needed to consolidate and expand civil society engagement, one which can reframe the issues through a wider and more inclusive human security discourse concerned with principles of development and social justice.
The Nile Basin Discourse held a sub-regional forum in March 2011 in Cairo to discuss the benefits of cooperation and costs of non-cooperation under the theme: ‘Shared Waters, Shared Opportunities’. Serious concerns for the sustainability of the Regional Integrated Watershed Management Programme were revealed. Questions as to community benefits, lack of meaningful community participation in implementation, and inadequate compensation to local communities for their contribution to critical aspects of watershed management were cited. Similarly, the Regional Cooperation and Institutional Strengthening Programme (ISP) was found to still lack consensus among some riparian countries in the process of advancing Nile Basin Cooperation. Additional problems identified were failure to mainstream the role and place of civil society in the institutionalisation of the Nile Basin Cooperation, and low awareness and uncertainty on the transition process after the lapse of the ISP (Weddi 2011). The Nile Basin Shared Vision Programme, complemented by its subsidiary action programmes, was expected to generate the institutional, technical, knowledge and communications, transportation, market, energy and physical infrastructure for integrated management of the natural capital stocks of the Nile basin system. This was in turn expected to unleash the shared benefits of development across multiple sectors fuelled by multiple uses of water and a wider spectrum of basin resources. After over a decade of effort to forge cooperation under this aegis, poverty and food security remain chronic problems while water scarcity, economic and climate security are arguably of greater concern to greater numbers of people within the Nile Basin today than in 2001 when the donor community celebrated the ‘unprecedented level of cooperation’ in launching the Nile Basin Initiative.
To reinvigorate Basin cooperation from the ground up, increased efforts need to be made to address the shortcomings identified through these stakeholder dialogues. Specifically, a focus at the national level to ensure the meaningful inclusion and participation of local communities, including women and the most marginalised, in Nile Basin Initiative processes. Without addressing these failings identified by recent stakeholder dialogues in the subsidiary basin regions, the political process will remain a non-starter.
What constitutes meaningful inclusion, and what are the barriers that must be overcome to achieve it in the context of basin cooperation for human security?
Social, cultural and spiritual drivers: a return to first principles
A pragmatic focus on building interdependence through shared economic benefits is unlikely to unlock the political deadlock. To bridge the gulf in perceptions of what constitutes water security between upstream and downstream states, a shift in the discourse is also needed. The motivational roots of collective human security are of a more social, cultural and spiritual nature, which might offer a way forward that is also a key to making more meaningful inclusion possible. Social discourse on shared values and the principles they reflect is likely to be provocative, but is at the root of human security, and might just open a creative path for deep trust to flourish among people in the basin states – and is therefore worthy of serious consideration.
By focusing on shared values and the cultural and spiritual roots that anchor social norms, a new kind of common ground can perhaps be cultivated, from which confidence in a more broadly and actively shared vision of peace and prosperity for all in the Nile basin region can grow. One source of passionate cohesion (as well as conflict) is religion, and rather than avoid the subject of Islam as potentially incendiary, in light of the events that have begun to transform society in Egypt and other countries in the Muslim world, this may be precisely the right time for a fresh look into relevant Islamic principles and for interfaith dialogue around fairness and equity as a new lens through which to refocus and mobilise greater public and civil society participation in Nile Basin cooperation.
The revolutions in early 2011 which swept Egypt and other Islamic countries almost overnight are fundamentally concerned with equity and social action for the common good. This has opened a fresh and inclusive space for creative and pluralistic dialogue. Why not take the opportunity to call for upstream/downstream discussion both among Muslim constituencies within the basin, and between members of the many different faiths that inspire and influence the motivations of people in the basin to engage in social action? While the top-down political process is stalled, the importance of opening new entry points for civil society to carry the Nile cooperation discourse on the common good forward is particularly important. Exploration of shared values and principles that transcend differences offers a means to bring new impetus and clarity to the meaning of ‘shared vision’ at the grass-roots.
Islam and the social ecology of religion
Islam has much to say about the two basic questions with which we are confronted as individuals and as organised societies: how to get along with each other, and how to do so without degrading our life support system – the earth's environment. Some Muslim scholars assert that Islamic law establishes values and principles that should govern the use of land, water, vegetation, livestock and wildlife, but that modern Muslim societies have forgotten these aims, principles and institutions (Foltz et al. 2003, Khalid and O'Brien 1997, Rauf 2004). Some of these vital yet little-recognised areas of Islamic law include:
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A basis for human rights for women in the context of ecological justice, to promote equal access to natural as well as social resources (Foltz et al. 2003).
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Ihya whereby a person who revives degraded land may take possession of it.15
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Iqta provides for the state to grant unclaimed or state-owned land to those willing to take responsibility for reviving and cultivating the land for the benefit of themselves or the community.
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Ijarah allows for the contractual leasing of land by its owners in order to make specific improvements or to cultivate specific crops.16
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Zones around water resources are known as harim which can be individually owned (around a well) but the banks of watercourses are generally managed by the state for the public good.
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Areas of land protected for the public good are known as hima and could presumably include aquifer recharge zones.
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Waqf is a kind of public trust whereby land can be dedicated as a charitable endowment for the public good, and to be successful require standards for good management.
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Hisbah is the office responsible for the inspection and enforcement of standards, and would thus require specific expertise, for example in the construction of dams or irrigation systems. Water resources are subject to classification under Islamic law, and large permanently flowing rivers may be freely used by anyone, with smaller rivers subject to the proviso that no harm is done to local people (depriving them of their water) (Khalid and O'Brien 1997).
Islam offers a novel platform for discourse concerned with collective human security in that there is no separation between the ‘laws of nature’ and those of a moral character that govern human society. The same (divine) reality is reflected in both. However, in contrast with nature, humans have the ability and freedom of choice, to obey or disobey this natural law. The struggle in every moment of decision can be construed as the essence of jihad: the moral obligation to choose to do the right thing, to do that which will cause no harm to nature or other people (Nasr 1996). It has been suggested that through a revival of Islamic principles relevant to human relationships with each other and with nature, a sort of ‘green jihad’ could arise, animated by a renewed responsibility for stewardship of nature, symbolised by Islam's most exalted colour, the colour which symbolises the Prophet Mohamed, which is green.17
Conclusion
In any faith tradition, the expected outcome of dialogue is a heightened sense of connection to and understanding of the natural order, and the reaffirmation of the link between ourselves and the human family with whom we share both the responsibility to steward, and to share equitably the benefits of, the natural world. Discussion about values and principles across different faiths enables us to see from the perspectives of others, the sacred, both in nature and in people akin to and different from ourselves. This motivates the desire to engage, to treat each other and our natural resource systems with a dignity and respect fundamental to human security, and also reminds us how precious is each part of a unified and yet infinitely diverse whole.
There is potential for Islam to play either a disruptive or a revitalising role in the processes of Nile Basin cooperation. By the same token, the pro-democracy uprisings in Islamic countries may contribute to either entrenching, or triggering divestiture of, the trappings of culture and tradition that restrict civil liberties and obstruct regional cooperation at the basin scale.
Insofar as the discourse of some leading Muslims in North America has begun to espouse democratic principles as inherent in Islam, there is potential for a similarly liberating thought process to catalyse a new understanding that can inspire unity of purpose within the Nile basin. In the melting pot of the United States, Muslims converging in communities composed of people with vastly different cultural backgrounds begin to discover that some restrictive practices which have come to be attributed to Islam may actually be rooted in pre-Islamic tradition, and have no place in today's Islam. Some of these are for example the loss of the rule of law or an independent judiciary, and the oppression of women. A thoughtful imam in New York makes the case that when Muslims from diverse backgrounds find themselves free to live and express Islam in an open and democratic society, they are likely to discover that Islam in fact supports social cohesion and cooperation for the common good – in ways that can inspire collective responsibility for stewardship of shared natural resources and genuine cooperation across all faiths and ethnicities, including working for social inclusion and gender equity (Rauf 2004). If this is the case there may good reason to create intentional dialogue around the social equity and environmental principles and values of Islam both among disparate Muslim constituencies and among different faith groups within the Nile Basin. Of course, inclusive and pluralistic dialogue should be specifically designed so that secular participation in such discourse is explicitly welcome.
Examination of the common and fundamentally religious principles that underpin the issues of concern to human security – dignity, integrity, fairness, justice, gender equity, inclusion of the marginalised, respect for all fellow human beings and personal responsibility for natural resource systems as part of the shared and divine order of nature – can inspire social action and may prove to be the discourse that can transcend the divisiveness and dead-end traps of dressing water cooperation in the wolf's clothing of national security.
Note on contributor
Janot Mendler de Suarez dedicated 11 years to participative peer learning and knowledge-sharing dialogue for water cooperation supported by the Global Environment Facility. She serves on the Council of Advisors for the University of Massachusetts–Boston Collaborative Institute on Oceans Climate and Security, and co-chairs the Global Oceans Forum working group on Oceans, Climate and Security.