To what extend is the water of the Nile Valley being used in a sustainable way?

        However, it seems that both the build of Aswan Dam and the two treaties caused more problems. Since the treaties are unfair to countries other than Egypt and Sudan, they cause political conflicts between countries. The treaty states that no country other than Egypt can use the water for irrigation and power generation. But that was signed in 1929, under the colonial Britain. Therefore, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a German organization, regarded this treaty as obsolete, and only post-colonial agreements can be considered valid. As more and more countries contested, in 1990s, they started to discuss a solution. Uganda asks for an annual compensation of US$1.2 million, Ethiopia says it will need less foreign food aid with the water. Bertrand Charrier, the Vice President of Green Cross International said that Egypt must learn to share the water, and the best solution is having an international law.

        After looking at the political issues, we will focus on the drawbacks brought by the Aswan High Dam, which causes mainly environmental and social consequences. Firstly, end of annual flooding means no more nature silt fertile added to the land, causing delta to retreat, as the sediment filled the reservoir instead of the delta, which also lowered the storage capacity of reservoir. Also, due to seepage and evaporation, 14% of water was lost in the reservoir annually. As the land is salinised and no longer naturally fertilized, famers need to buy expensive artificial fertilizer. This both polluted the ground water and increased cost of food. The wildlife is also fully affected, such as amount of shrimps has decreased in the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, an important social impact is the increase of parasitic disease due to the stagnant water of the fields and the reservoir. From all of the above, we can see that the water in Niles not only affected the environment and people’s life, and also made water and food a growing problem in their future generation.

        To conclude, it is clear that the water of the Nile Valley is not used in a sustainable way, mainly due to the unfair distribution and insufficient usage of water that reduces water and fertile land for farming. In order to solve this problem, an international agreement should be created to make the distribution of water fairer, and usage of water should be controlled by regulation and education.