PARIS: With half the world experiencing water shortage for no less than a part of the 12 months, the large dams being constructed by some nations to spice up their energy provides whereas their neighbours go parched are a rising supply of potential battle.
Forward of a UN convention in New York on world entry to water, AFP appears at 5 mega-projects with very totally different penalties, relying on whether or not you reside upstream or downstream.
MEGA-DAM ON THE NILE
The waters of Africa’s longest river, the Nile, are on the centre of a decade-long dispute between Ethiopia — the place the Nile’s largest tributary, the Blue Nile, rises — and its downstream neighbours Sudan and Egypt.
In 2011, Addis Ababa launched a $4.2 billion hydroelectric challenge on the river, which it sees as important to lighting up rural Ethiopia.
Sudan and Egypt, nonetheless, see the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam as a menace to their water provides — Egypt alone depends on the Nile for about 97 p.c of its irrigation and ingesting water.
Ethiopia has insisted the dam won’t disturb the stream of water and turned on the primary turbine in February 2020.
IRAQI, SYRIAN THIRST
Lengthy used to drilling for oil, war-scarred Iraq is now digging ever deeper for water as a frenzy of dam-building, primarily in Turkey, sucks water out of the area’s two nice rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.
Turkey launched the development of a big complicated of dams and hydroelectric crops throughout the southeast within the Eighties.
In 1990 it accomplished the large Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates River, simply 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Syria’s border.
Extra not too long ago, in 2019, the traditional city of Hasankeyf on the Tigris was submerged to make method for the huge Ilisu Dam.
Iraq and Syria say Turkey’s dam-building has resulted in a drastic discount of the water flowing via their lands.
Baghdad recurrently asks Ankara to launch extra water to counter drought, however Turkey’s ambassador to Iraq, Ali Riza Guney, ruffled feathers final July when he stated, “water is essentially wasted in Iraq”.
Syria’s Kurds in the meantime have accused their arch-foe Turkey of weaponising the Euphrates, accusing it of intentionally holding again water to spark a drought, which Ankara denies.
CHINA’S MEKONG DAM SPREE
China is a frenetic dam builder, setting up 50,000 dams within the Yangtze basin up to now 70 years — together with the notorious Three Gorges.
However it’s China’s tasks on the Mekong River, which rises in China and twists south via Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, that the majority alarm its neighbours.
The Mekong feeds greater than 60 million individuals via its basin and tributaries.
Washington has blamed China’s actions for inflicting extreme droughts in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
In 2019, the US monitor Eyes on Earth revealed satellite tv for pc imagery displaying the dams in China holding “above-average pure stream”.
Beijing insists its reservoirs assist to keep up the steadiness of the river, by storing water within the wet season and releasing it within the dry season.
WATER RIVALRY IN KASHMIR
The Indus River is likely one of the longest on the Asian continent, reducing via ultra-sensitive borders within the area, together with the demarcation between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan in Kashmir.
The 1960 Indus Water Treaty theoretically shares out water between the 2 nations however has been fraught with disputes.
Pakistan has lengthy feared that India, which sits upstream, may limit its entry, adversely affecting its agriculture. And India has threatened to take action from time to time.
In an indication of the tensions, the arch-rivals have constructed duelling energy crops alongside the banks of the Kishanganga River, which flows into an Indus tributary.
TENSIONS ON RIO PARANA
The Itaipu hydroelectric plant, located on the Parana River on the Brazil-Paraguay border, has typically been the supply of tensions between the 2 co-owner nations.
One of many two hydroelectricity crops that produce essentially the most energy on the planet, alongside China’s Three Gorges, had its vitality shared out underneath a 1973 treaty.
However Paraguay demanded extra and ultimately acquired thrice more cash from Brazil, which makes use of 85 p.c of the electrical energy produced.
In 2019, a brand new deal on the sale of energy from Itaipu almost introduced down Paraguay’s authorities, with consultants arguing it could scale back Paraguay’s entry to low-cost energy.
The 2 nations promptly cancelled the deal.
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