Congo River

Il Grand Inga Dam Project rappresenta un mastodontico progetto idroelettrico sul fiume Congo dal costo stimato di circa 80 miliardi di dollari. Il grosso della spesa dovrebbe essere sostenuto dalla Cina, mentre in minima parte alcune organizzazioni internazionali sono state coinvolte nel finanziamento. I benefici che tale progetto apporterebbe al Congo e a tutta l’Africa sub-sahariana sono molti, soprattutto in termini di produzione di energia idroelettrica e di impiego. Allo stesso tempo, si riscontrano varie criticità, su tutte in merito all’impatto ambientale che un’infrastruttura così massiccia potrebbe causare ad intere regioni. L’obiettivo di questo paper è di fare chiarezza su questo grande progetto e sulle effettive conseguenze, positive e negative, che esso potrebbe comportare per molti milioni di Africani.

Transboundary river basins are under increasing pressure due to population growth, agricultural and industrial developments, and climate change, as well as river pollution. Water scarcity is on the increase due to the increasing gap between water demands and supply. This will result in more tensions, disputes, conflicts, and deadlocks in negotiations over water distribution, length of time it takes to fill the eservoir, and allocation. Ethiopia is building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile River with a hydropower capacity of 6,000 MW. The total estimated cost of the project is US$ 4.8 Billion and will be the largest dam in Africa, which is much larger than the Aswan Dam in Egypt. Regional controversies have risen over the construction of the dam between Ethiopia and the downstream countries (Sudan and Egypt). The Blue Nile River is a source of around 85% of the Nile River water. Egypt claims that GERD will reduce flow of water in the Nile River between 11 and 19 billion m3(BCM) which will affect 2 million people and will also interrupt electricity supplies 25 to 40%. The real scale of the environmental impacts of GERD, under construction upstream of the Nile River, together with the rising sea levels, due to climate change, leading to saltwater intrusion downstream, are still not clear. But for Ethiopians GERD is empowering development and contribution to their future. With the Nile, no longer Egyptian birthright, and the Nile Delta gradually disappearing into the Mediterranean sea, millions of Egypt’s people will inevitably need to look elsewhere for a livable future. The crises, therefore, necessities the adaptation of a more effective institutional arrangement, such as through Rowland-Ostrom Framework, for common pool shared water resource management and cooperative approach to address and resolve present and future problems, including on other common transboundary resources (forest, oil/gas and minerals).The need for expanding traditional integrated water resources management to better include the cultural, social and political complexity of the GERD is the key factor to reconcile the contrasting concepts of “nationalism” and “regional hydro solidarity”. Connecting Nile and Congo water system, through diverting water by digging a 600-km canal together with pumping stations and other massive infrastructure to transport water from the Congo Basin to the Nile Basin has been suggested as an alternative way of ensuring Egypt’s water security. As part of mitigation measures, Egypt needs to invest in desalinization for fresh water, water-saving drip irrigation, and come up with an Aquifer Storage Recovery (ASR) scheme, artificial recharge and scheduled water extraction, to minimize the cumulative effect of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and seawater intrusion downstream along the Mediterranean coast.