CAIRO, May 20 (UPI) -- Egypt, which takes the lion's share of water from the Nile River, is refusing to give up a drop to upstream African states that signed a treaty for more equitable sharing, escalating a long-running dispute over the river.
Meantime, as climate change and inefficient water management take an increasing toll of Africa's water resources, the World Food Program warned a conference of regional leaders in Tanzania earlier this month that conflict over water is already prevalent across the continent.
Deputy Executive Director Sheila Sisulu told the World Economic Forum on Africa that water disputes are becoming common in the Sahel -- the Sahara region in the continent's northwestern corner -- and the Horn of Africa on the northeastern coast.
The problems over dwindling water supplies have been worsened by conflicts "between pastoralists who are seeking water for their animals, and farmers who're protecting their crops," she told Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper.
Hadi Larbi, the Beirut-based Tunisian director of the World Bank's Middle East Department, noted in a 2009 report on combating water scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa region: "It is almost a feat that the Middle East, which is plagued by conflicts, has so far managed to avoid major water wars, even though water is a life-and-death economic issue for the people of the region.
"But for many of these nations, which already are treading the razor's edge of conflict, water is becoming increasingly a catalyst for confrontation -- an issue of national security and foreign policy as well as domestic stability.
"Given water's growing ability to redefine interstate relations, the success of future efforts to address water-sharing and distribution will hinge upon political and strategic management at the national and regional levels of this diminishing natural resource," said Larbi.
At a meeting of Nile Basin states at Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik in April, Egypt insisted on maintaining the 55.5 billion cubic meters it takes annually from the Nile, at 4,163 miles the world's longest river.
That's more than half the total flow of 84 billion cubic meters a year. Egyptian authorities say the country will need 86.2 billion cubic meters by 2017, a volume it cannot meet given its current resources.
The Nile, which rises in Lake Victoria in East Africa, is Egypt's lifeline. Most of its 80 million people live along its banks. Without the Nile, the ancient civilization that built the pyramids would never have emerged.
The Egyptian government has, as it has always done, cited its "historic" rights to the Nile's life-giving waters, a 1929 agreement with Britain, then acting on behalf of its East African colonies, that gave Cairo the right to effectively veto upstream projects, and a 1959 accord with Sudan, its southern neighbor, that gave them 90 percent of the Nile water.
Sudan is the Nile's second-largest consumer. Only these two states have fixed shares of water confirmed by international agreements.
In April, Egypt also demanded continued veto power over any new irrigation projects initiated by the other Nile Basin states -- Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Eritrea has observer status.
The sub-Saharan African states have rejected that and demanded new allocations of Nile water for their burgeoning populations, industrial capacity, particularly power generation, and agricultural growth.
They argue that the 1929 and 1959 colonial-era agreements are outdated and in need of revision because they were drafted by foreign powers with their own interests in mind.
Following the collapse of the Sharm el-Sheik talks, four of the African states known as "source nations" because their rivers flow into the Blue Nile and White Nile that converge in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, signed their cooperation agreement in Entebbe, Uganda, on May 14.
The signatories -- Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania -- gave Egypt and Sudan one year to sign on to the new treaty, the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework.
They say it supersedes the 1959 agreement that gave Egypt and Sudan most of the Nile's water.
Mohammed Nasreddin Allam, Egypt's minister of water resources and irrigation, said Cairo will take "whatever steps are necessary" to protect its "historic rights" to the Nile waters to ensure the nation's survival.
What happens next is not yet clear. But given the intransigence of the feuding states, the dispute can only get worse.
