South Sudan Dam.. How will Egypt face the “new water threat”?

Listen to the article. The audio text is automated, generated by an automated system

The recent statements of the Minister of Energy and Dams in South Sudan, Agok Makur, sparked a wide wave of controversy and political and legal concerns, after he confirmed that his country was not afraid of the downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan objecting to his plan to implement the Fula hydroelectric dam project based on their sovereign right.

Egyptian specialists refuted these allegations, stressing that involving Egypt in previous approvals is a legal fallacy. They stressed that international law obliges Juba to provide prior notification and consultation and not to harm downstream countries, warning at the same time against attempts to incite hostility or implement plans aimed at harming Egypt’s national security.

The former Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Dr. Mohamed Nasr El-Din Allam, explained that the intention of announcing this dam, for which funding has not yet been provided, according to his estimation, is to provoke and create an atmosphere of hostility between Egypt, South Sudan, and the countries of the Equatorial Plateau, without any need or even reasons for disagreement.

Allam also added in statements to Al Arabiya.net/Al Hadath.net that building dams in and of itself does not represent a threat to Egypt or other Nile Basin countries. He continued by explaining that dams vary in their forms and purposes, some of which are for generating electricity and which depend on storage, such as Ethiopian dams, and some of which depend on the speed of the river’s flow to manage turbines and generate energy, as is the case in some dams on the tropical plateau, especially in Uganda. He said: “This is what is assumed in the Fula Dam in South Sudan, and it is also what is assumed in the storage dams for irrigation and drinking, which are dams that most upstream countries do not need.”

The former minister concluded by warning against provoking disagreements, stressing that Egypt has been, is, and will continue to support the needs of many Basin countries financially and technically, pointing out that cooperation is the only path to the well-being of the peoples of the Basin in general, and the peoples of Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia in particular.

For his part, Dr. Muhammad Mahmoud Mahran, Professor of Public International Law and Secretary-General of the International Committee for the Defense of Water Resources, considered that the statements of the Minister of Energy and Dams in South Sudan require a careful legal reading to refute the argument made by the Minister and to determine the international legal framework governing this file. He believed that when the South Sudanese minister cited that the Council of Ministers of the Nile Basin countries approved thirty-four projects, including dam projects, and that Egypt was among the countries that approved these projects, he presented a fundamentally flawed legal argument, because the framework approval for a list of development projects in the Nile Basin is fundamentally different from the detailed permission to build a specific dam in a specific location with specific specifications and specific hydrological impacts on the two downstream countries, which Egypt did not declare or grant to Juba in any official form.

As Mahran added, in explanations to Al Arabiya.net/Al Hadath.net, international law precisely specifies what South Sudan must do before commencing the implementation of the Fula Dam, based on three binding international texts, namely Articles Eleven to Nineteen of the 1997 United Nations Convention on International Watercourses, which obliges countries to notify other affected countries at least six months in advance and allow a period for consultation and negotiation before commencing implementation. He said that there is a principle of non-serious harm stipulated It is stipulated in Article Seven of the same agreement, which prohibits upstream countries from taking measures that cause serious harm to downstream countries. He explained that the principle of cooperation stipulated in Article Eight obligates states to cooperate on the basis of equality of sovereignty, territorial integrity and mutual benefit to achieve optimal use and appropriate protection of the international watercourse.

In addition, he stressed that South Sudan is “a sister country that deserves development and needs hydroelectric power, a legitimate right guaranteed by international law, but this right is exercised in the correct way, which begins with official notification, then consultation, then studying the impact on downstream countries, then agreement, and not by unilateral declaration and claiming Egyptian approval, which was not issued in the form claimed by the minister.” He considered that what happened had other dimensions and the implementation of plans that harm Egypt's national security.

It is noteworthy that the crisis of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam still represents one of the most complex geopolitical and water issues in the Nile Basin region and the Middle East in recent decades, as the roots of the dispute lie in Egypt’s fears that filling the dam’s reservoir and operating it unilaterally will reduce its historical share of 55.5 billion cubic meters, which threatens its water and food security and the future of millions of farmers, in addition to the impact on the High Dam’s ability to generate electricity and store water, in addition to Sudan’s concern about the safety of its operational dams and the safety of Its facilities.

Despite the rounds of negotiations extending over the years, which varied between African sponsorship and international mediation with the participation of the United States and the World Bank, the crisis continued to revolve in a vicious circle as a result of the absence of political will to reach a binding legal agreement.

Cairo and Khartoum are demanding that Addis Ababa reach a comprehensive agreement that regulates filling and operating mechanisms in times of drought and extended drought, in addition to establishing a clear dispute resolution mechanism. While Ethiopia adheres to its right to unilateral exploitation of its resources and considers development projects to be purely sovereign, completing successive filling stages without final coordination with the two downstream countries, which has kept the file open to multiple possibilities that affect the stability of the entire region.