Ethiopia may fill its gigantic dam project with Nile water this year. How fast the new reservoir should run full, affects the water supply on the banks of the Nile further downstream.
In Egypt, farmers have relied on Nile water for centuries to irrigate their fields. In particular, rice cultivation, one of the strategically most important staple food of the 96-million. People, is affected.
Experts estimate that by 2019, Egypt will need to import rice instead of exporting rice for decades. But there is still a state strictly regulated rice acreage. Under the threat of fines, the state monitors that the permitted acreage is not exceeded.
Farmers fear that once the reservoir is filled in Ethiopia, less water will be available for field crops and therefore you now want to produce rice in reserve.
Meanwhile, the ten Nile riparian states are arguing about how fast the reservoir should be filled. Ethiopia wants to fill the lake in three years, Egypt demands that it take ten years.
There is no doubt among scientists that the flow of the Nile will change during the filling phase. How dramatic that will be depends on the time when the lake is full. Egyptian sources estimate that 1 billion cubic meters of water will be lost to 80,000 hectares of arable land and affect 1 million people. If you fill the lake in three years, 51% of the Egyptian arable land would be lost, at six years it would be 10%.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also sees the influence of the reservoir as a major threat to Egyptian agriculture. In addition to Egypt but also the Sudan is affected. The three countries are looking for solutions in April in another meeting.
In Egypt, farmers have relied on Nile water for centuries to irrigate their fields. In particular, rice cultivation, one of the strategically most important staple food of the 96-million. People, is affected.
Experts estimate that by 2019, Egypt will need to import rice instead of exporting rice for decades. But there is still a state strictly regulated rice acreage. Under the threat of fines, the state monitors that the permitted acreage is not exceeded.
Farmers fear that once the reservoir is filled in Ethiopia, less water will be available for field crops and therefore you now want to produce rice in reserve.
Meanwhile, the ten Nile riparian states are arguing about how fast the reservoir should be filled. Ethiopia wants to fill the lake in three years, Egypt demands that it take ten years.
There is no doubt among scientists that the flow of the Nile will change during the filling phase. How dramatic that will be depends on the time when the lake is full. Egyptian sources estimate that 1 billion cubic meters of water will be lost to 80,000 hectares of arable land and affect 1 million people. If you fill the lake in three years, 51% of the Egyptian arable land would be lost, at six years it would be 10%.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also sees the influence of the reservoir as a major threat to Egyptian agriculture. In addition to Egypt but also the Sudan is affected. The three countries are looking for solutions in April in another meeting.
Excerpt from Wikipedia: "GERD Ethiopia"
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (engl.Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, GERD, Great Dam of the Ethiopian Revival, previously known as the Millennium Dam, and occasionally Hidase Dam) is a dam project under construction with a nearly two-kilometer-long and 145-meter-high main gravity dam on the Blue Nile about 40 Kilometers east of the Sudanese border in the remote West Ethiopian region of Benishangul-Gumuz. With 6,000 megawatts, the connected hydropower plant will be the largest in Africa. The reservoir will also be one of the largest on the continent with 63 billion cubic meters of tailings. The completion was originally planned for 2017.
