In late June 2020, the Ethiopian government accused Egypt of sponsoring cyberattacks, which targeted more than a dozen Ethiopian government sites. One of the hacked web pages was modified to say: “Prepare the Ethiopian people for the wrath of the Pharaohs.” But what could have elicited such a chilling message from a group of hackers? The likely answer ... water.
Egypt, Sudan, and several other countries located along the banks of the Blue Nile River rely on this integral water source. While the river is rooted in Ethiopia, officially, Egypt and Sudan hold rights over nearly all of the Nile waters because of two treaties from 1929 and 1959. Importantly, Ethiopia was not consulted on either treaty. Consequently, not believing it should be bound by treaties it had no say on, Ethiopia proceeded to build a hydroelectric dam at the start of the Arab Spring in 2011. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is one of the largest African infrastructure projects and its completion will generate enough electricity to connect its majority off-the-grid population and generate energy sales. More importantly to its neighbors, this new dam gives Ethiopia control over how much water flows downstream.
If Ethiopia chooses to fill up its reservoir (which is nearly the size of London), countries downstream, like Egypt, worry they will not have access to enough water to serve their populations. Egypt’s fear, coupled with Ethiopia’s ardent refusal to withdraw from the dam project, has led to heated exchanges and dead-end negotiations between the two nations, with both threatening the possibility of war.
Unfortunately, this escalation is nothing new. There have been more than 900 recorded water-related conflicts dating way back to 3000 BC, but many of the modern day conflicts are complex political battles over water access. Domestic disputes are commonplace where the interests of locals are pitted against those of foreign investors, as seen recently in an American company’s attempt to build a massive brewery in arid Mexicali. While this dispute was settled by a vote in which the local farmers and activists prevailed, others have escalated toward needless violence.
In 2000, Cochabamba natives protesting Bolivia’s privatization of the city’s municipal water company, which had been required by the International Monetary Fund in exchange for a $138 million dollar loan, were met with armed riot police. The conflict eventually resulted in at least nine deaths and more than one hundred injured. Even after the violence, World Bank President James Wolfensohn maintained that people should be charged for the use of public services such as water to avoid wasting precious resources. In doing so, many of the citizens of the countries that the World Bank targeted for water privatization were unable to afford water.
Unsurprisingly, water conflicts tend to occur in areas already rife with political unrest, like the region around Lake Chad in the Sahel. Once one of the world’s largest inland water bodies, Lake Chad is now rapidly drying up and terrorist groups such as Boko Haram frequently take advantage of the vulnerable, food insecure natives to recruit new members through economic incentives. Boko Haram also terrorizes the region by cattle rustling or stealing cattle to fund their violent campaigns. In response, countries in the Sahel like Nigeria have increased their defense budget to fight Boko Haram, but there is little on their agenda to fight the underlying problem of it all: climate change.
Clearly, climate change is inextricably linked to the world’s drinking water’s newfound scarcity. Higher temperatures, less predictable and more extreme weather conditions like severe droughts and heavy flooding contribute directly to water scarcity and contamination. This leads to food insecurity as farmers cannot irrigate their crops and gives rise to epidemiological crises like the devastating cholera outbreak in Yemen, and ultimately, this tends to lead to social unrest and violence.
The vast majority of the political crises related to water access such as the clash between locals and “Big Alcohol” supporters in Mexico, the Cochabamba protests of water privatization, and the growth of Boko Haram in the barren Sahel are tied to climate change. The current situation between Ethiopia and Egypt is just another example of how climate change is fueling political battles over water access. While Egypt relies on the Blue Nile River for drinking water and crop irrigation, Ethiopia is counting on the hydroelectric dam for an economic boost and water security.
Whether this conflict is eventually settled through diplomatic efforts, it is unlikely to be the last conflict over water we will see. As such, it is crucial that we begin to address the root issue of water conflict, and a host of other issues, which is climate change.