Hydropolitics in a Warming World: The GERD & the Future of Nile Basin Governance

Human Rights Research Center
5 hours ago
10 min read

December 18, 2025

As climate change accelerates, many political scientists and other thought leaders are increasingly asking whether resource scarcity will emerge as a primary driver of global conflict. While resource pressures have historically fueled or intensified unrest — such as drought-driven grievances in Syria before the Arab Spring or competition over dwindling water supplies in the Lake Chad Basin — they have rarely been the central cause. Nowhere is this tension more visible than in the Eastern Nile Basin, where Sudan, Ethiopia, and Egypt are navigating a centuries-old dispute over one of the world’s most vital water sources. Ethiopia’s completion of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has brought these long-standing frictions to a boiling point, situating the GERD at the center of a rapidly escalating geopolitical struggle over sovereignty, water rights, and national survival. As the dam becomes fully operational, the stakes for meaningful cooperation are higher than ever.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam [Image source: Arab Center DC]

The Nile’s Geography and Historical Significance

The Nile River is the longest river in the world, measuring 6,825 kilometers and draining an estimated 3,349,000 square kilometers of land. The river touches 11 different African countries, flowing from Lake Victoria on the borders of Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, through northeastern Africa before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea off of Egypt’s coast. It is formed by 3 main tributaries: the Atbara flowing from Ethiopia’s highlands, the Blue Nile hailing from Ethiopia’s Lake Tana, and the White Nile ascending from the Rift Valley’s Lake Victoria and Lake Albert. The White Nile and Blue Nile converge at Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.

It is difficult to adequately describe just how important the Nile River was for the early civilizations it sustained, with the most well-known being Ancient Egypt. The soil of the Nile River Delta between Cairo and the Mediterranean is extremely nutrient-rich due to annual floods depositing silt along the riverbanks, creating an ideal setting for agriculture. The Ancient Egyptians built their storied society along the river’s floodplain, constructing their calendar around its yearly cycle and associating their gods with aspects of the river. The Nile was also vital to the survival of Ancient Nubia, one of Africa’s earliest kingdoms, located in modern-day Sudan and Egypt. Both societies learned to harness the Nile for their own uses, building canals and irrigation systems for their crops. The Nile also served as an aquatic highway, facilitating trade and spreading these kingdoms' influence far beyond their borders. Today, the Nile still serves as the lifeforce of Northeastern Africa, as millions rely on it for irrigation, drinking water, fishing, and hydroelectric power.

Climate Change & the Nile

Naturally, there is a lot of interest in protecting the Nile, especially as climate change and population growth places additional stressors on this precious resource. Climate change’s exact future impact on the Nile River Basin is uncertain. The Basin covers 12 different climatic zones, causing great variation in scholars’ current model projections, but most projections indicate wetter summers and drier winters. Despite a possible greater water availability, an increase in variability — meaning both more frequent floods and more severe droughts — is likely. Temperature projections can be made with a higher degree of confidence and are generally agreed upon to be increasing in the period leading up to 2050, with some authors even suggesting that higher temperatures will offset any gain in water availability. Increased evapotranspiration (ETO) from lakes, reservoirs, and crops will mean that more water is required per unit of crop yield. In Sudan, the government is planning for warming of up to 4.2℃, and increased ETO from wheat crops is expected to drive increased water demand. In Egypt, crop ETO is predicted to increase by 5-21%, and as a result, food crop yields are projected to decline by 10% on average.

Egypt, the country furthest downstream from the Nile, is particularly vulnerable to chronic water scarcity, which occurs when the available water supply is insufficient to meet demand in a region. There are various reasons for water scarcity, including over-exploitation, pollution, population growth, ecosystem degradation, and improper infrastructure/governance. The Nile provides approximately 97% of Egypt’s water needs, and rapid population growth and limited financial resources have made the government increasingly anxious that this reliance will threaten the country’s wellbeing. The Nile Valley is one of the most densely populated regions on Earth, and over the past 30 years, its population has doubled. The Nile sustains over 104 million people in Egypt, with 20% of the labor force working in agriculture. Currently, Egypt receives approximately 590 meters cubed per capita per year, and this number is projected to drop below the extreme water scarcity line of 500 meters cubed per capita per year by 2030. This predicament is being worsened by saltwater intrusion into fresh groundwater due to rising sea levels. The government is currently trying to address this scarcity using strategies such as desalinization and artificial groundwater recharge. However, it is risky to depend on desalination, as the technology is extremely expensive, requires high energy consumption, and relies on fossil fuels.

Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam

All of Egypt’s concerns have been amplified by the development of Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam. The project, which began operating at full capacity on September 9, 2025, has been in the works since April 2011. This is not the first Ethiopian dam project, and also not the first time that Egypt objected to such upstream Nile modifications. In the 1960s, Emperor Haile Selassie promoted modernization projects such as the Koka Dam. In 1978, Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam proposed building a hydroelectric dam, to which Egypt’s then-president Anwar Sadat responded, “We are not going to die of thirst in Egypt. We’ll go to Ethiopia and die there”. In the 2000s, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) expanded hydroelectric capacity with the Tezeke and Gilgel Gibe III Dams.

The GERD surpasses all of these previous projects in scale, becoming the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa with a maximum power production capacity of 5150 MW, double the country’s current capacity. For Ethiopia, this project is less about water security and more about economic development and national pride. As of 2023, half of all Ethiopians still had no electricity; the GERD will change that, delivering hydroelectric power to millions of people. The country also plans to export this newly produced energy to nearby countries such as Kenya, Djibouti, Sudan, & South Sudan, aiding in increasing green energy throughout the continent. Ethiopian leaders see this dam as an opportunity to expand their regional power and bring prosperity to the growing country. Since 2004, Ethiopia’s GDP has been growing at about 10% per year, and from 2013-2018, it was the world’s fastest growing economy. The project also serves as a source of national pride, being funded entirely by the state through national bonds, public contributions, and deductions from civil servants. In addition, the dam will also serve as flood control downstream, protecting Khartoum from future floods. While the GERD seems poised to drastically transform and benefit Ethiopia, its downstream neighbors (namely Egypt) are concerned about how the dam will impact the Nile’s future streamflow.

Any modification to a river is going to have downstream effects; the question is how drastic these changes will be. In 2021, Egyptian experts estimated that a ~20-34% reduction in riverflow could occur if the reservoir filling coincided with a drought period, leading to an estimated 33% agricultural land loss per year. Luckily, during the initial filling periods of 2020-2022, no significant changes were noticed. However, this can mostly be attributed to increased rainfall and heavy flooding during this time. The current worst case scenario in which Egypt’s water security is severely undermined would occur after a prolonged drought that leaves both the GERD and Egypt’s Aswan High Dam reservoir depleted. With the populations of both countries continuing to grow, and prolonged drought becoming more frequent, this worst case scenario is looking more and more like a question of when rather than if.

Negotiation: Past, Present, & Future

Egypt claims that through the construction of the GERD, Ethiopia has taken unilateral control of the Blue Nile and violated international law by filling the dam’s reservoir without the consent of Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia refutes the validity of these international laws, on account of them being colonial-era agreements that Ethiopia was not a party to.

The 1929 Nile Water Agreement was the first modern treaty detailing how to distribute the Nile’s resources. This agreement was between Egypt and Great Britain, with Great Britain acting on behalf of its Nile River Basin colonies (Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, & Tanganyika — present day Tanzania). The treaty affirmed Egypt’s natural and historical rights over the Nile, granted Egypt an annual streamflow allocation of 48 billion cubic meters and Sudan 4 billion cubic meters of an estimated average annual yield of 84 billion cubic meters, and granted Egypt veto power over construction projects on the Nile or its tributaries. In 1959, a new agreement was reached granting Egypt 66% and Sudan 22% of annual flow. Importantly, neither of these agreements made allowances for the water needs of other riparian states, including Ethiopia whose highlands supply more than 80% of the Nile River flow. Despite the Nile River Basin countries growing in population and developing the capacity to more effectively harness the river, Egypt still insists that Nile Water Agreements must be honored. Ethiopia contests that it should not have to abide by colonial rulings of which it was excluded from.

This stalemate is a persistent thorn in the side of Nile River Basin regional affairs. Since the proposal of the GERD, Cairo’s stance has been that the project is an existential threat to Egypt’s water security. Any significant reduction to the Nile’s flow will have dramatic effects on its food supply and daily life. The country’s leadership also cites concerns about the lack of international oversight, protesting that Ethiopia should not have filled the dam’s reservoir without a legally binding agreement for water distribution in place.

However, negotiations for a new water distribution agreement have been stuck at a standstill. From 2010 to the present day, the Cooperative Framework Agreement has been open for signature. The treaty serves to, “promote integrated management, sustainable development, and harmonious utilization of the water resources of the Basin, as well as their conservation and protection for the benefit of present and future generations”. To this end, the Nile River Basin Commission would be created to facilitate the agreement’s implementation. While Ethiopia signed onto the agreement in 2013, Egypt has rejected the framework, seeking to redefine “equitable use” and include hard numbers. In negotiations concerning the Nile, Ethiopia often prefers a flexible and sovereign approach, while Egypt fights for fixed legal guarantees.

There was another stab at Nile Basin talks in Washington in 2020 right before Ethiopia planned to start filling the dam’s reservoir, and Cairo subsequently appealed to the UN Security Council to intervene. During these talks, specified methods were proposed for measuring dry periods and prolonged droughts alongside minimum release rules to safeguard consistent downstream flows. While Egypt and Sudan endorsed the plan, Ethiopia pulled out. Cairo claimed that Ethiopia considered the plan too restrictive, while Addis Ababa claimed that the mediators were biased in favor of Cairo. After Trump’s July 2025 claims that the GERD was built “with U.S. money, largely” the stalemate has only deepened; Washington is no longer seen as a neutral broker. Now, the GERD is fully functional with still no distribution agreement in place, deepening the tension between the two nations and the anxiety over the Nile’s future.

The GERD has fundamentally reshaped the political and hydrological balance of the Eastern Nile Basin, exposing the limits of outdated colonial-era treaties while revealing the urgent need for modern, climate-conscious water governance. With droughts intensifying, populations surging, and the future of the Nile increasingly uncertain, all riparian states, especially Egypt and Ethiopia, must move beyond entrenched positions and commit to a transparent, science-based framework for drought management, data sharing, and equitable use. Only through sustained diplomacy, not unilateral action, can the region transform the GERD from a flashpoint into a foundation for long-term stability.

Glossary

Artificial groundwater recharge: the process of adding water to an underground aquifer through human activity, such as diverting surface water into basins or injection wells to replenish groundwater supplies
Desalinization: the process of removing salt and other minerals from saline water, such as seawater, to make it fresh enough for drinking, irrigation, or industrial use
Evapotranspiration: the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and other surfaces and by transpiration from plants.
GDP: Gross Domestic Product; the total monetary value of all finished goods and services produced within a country's borders over a specific period, typically a year
Hydroelectric: relating to or denoting the generation of electricity using flowing water (typically from a reservoir held behind a dam or other barrier) to drive a turbine that powers a generator.
Riparian: relating to or situated on the banks of a river
Saltwater intrusion: the movement of saltwater into freshwater aquifers, wells, and other underground freshwater sources. This natural process happens because saltwater is denser than freshwater, causing it to move inland and replace the lighter freshwater
Sovereignty: the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power of a governing body to govern its territory and people without external interference
Tributary: a river or stream flowing into a larger river or lake
Unilateral: (of an action or decision) performed by or affecting only one person, group, or country involved in a particular situation, without the agreement of another or the others
Water poverty: a situation where a nation or region cannot afford the cost of sustainable clean water to all people at all times

Sources

HRRC accepts NO funding from governments for our research or campaigns. At every step of the way, our impact is made possible because of people like YOU. Make your contribution now!

Hydropolitics in a Warming World: The GERD & the Future of Nile Basin Governance

Recent Posts