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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — On the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, construction is underway on a public works project of gigantic physical proportions and exquisite political delicacy. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, now about halfway finished, amounts to a test: With water becoming precious enough to be the stuff of war, can nations find ways to share it?

So far, so good. The project is moving toward completion, and a recent joint declaration of principles by the leaders of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan pledges cooperation and no “significant” downstream harm. That is critical, given that the dam will control nearly two-thirds of the water on which Egypt depends. But for the cooperation to be meaningful, these three countries will need serious technical analysis. Poor assessment of such matters as the variability of annual rainfall or minimum flows required to maintain downstream water quality could undermine a decent agreement, leading to conflict of unpredictable intensity.

That’s because the flow of the Nile is climatic roulette. It experiences periods of plentiful water and periods of extended drought, and it always has: Remember the story (in both the Bible and the Quran) of seven years of plenty, and then seven lean years? But now the stakes are much higher: Egypt’s population is 90 million, and growing. That country’s Aswan High Dam, downstream from the Ethiopian dam, helps to moderate these fluctuations, but a second large dam and its reservoir higher upriver are going to complicate things.

Egypt now receives virtually all its water from the Nile — about 60 billion cubic meters a year, slightly above the amount provided for in its treaty agreement with Sudan. That amounts to the withdrawal of 700 cubic meters per capita per year. Compare that with California, which annually withdraws about 1,400 cubic meters per capita from multiple sources, including 30 percent of the Colorado River’s annual flow, and you understand just how scarce and precious the Nile’s water is to Egypt’s welfare.

California depends heavily on Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the reservoirs behind dams on the Colorado River, which together store slightly more than three years’ worth of that river’s total flow. The new dam in Ethiopia will have an even larger storage capacity than that of Powell and Mead combined, but still amounts to just 1.5 years of the flow of the Blue Nile alone. Adding in the very large reservoir behind Egypt’s Aswan High Dam gives a storage of about 1.75 years of the total flow of the Nile. It’s not a wide margin of safety for a long drought — as Californians will attest.

The monsoon rains in Ethiopia that will feed the new dam come mainly during just three months, so by storing that water, the new dam will moderate and smooth out the flow of the Blue Nile, the 900-mile-long headstream of the Nile itself. It will also generate huge amounts of electricity, the sale of which could finance much-needed development in Ethiopia — except that transmission lines to export the power are not yet being built.

Just as California has used stored water to become an agricultural powerhouse, Sudan will benefit by using the more stable flow of water from the new dam to raise its agricultural productivity. This will allow Sudan, which sits between Ethiopia and Egypt, to finally employ its full treaty allotment of river water, which in turn will reduce what is available to Egypt.

It’s clear that a cooperative agreement among Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt is needed to avoid conflict and downstream harm. This includes agreement on what amounts to “significant” harm, given that, in the past, Egypt has been willing to go to war to protect its water.

All three countries stand to benefit if they work together. The dam’s huge storage capacity could help both Sudan and Egypt during drought years. And if Egypt were to agree to buy the power that the new dam will generate (and to build the transmission lines to connect to it, perhaps with international help), then Ethiopia will benefit economically from stored water that has to flow downstream eventually.

Here is where the technical issues will be critical. Last November, the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab at M.I.T. convened experts on Nile Basin water resources. They pointed out that management of a river system with multiple dams required sophisticated joint management with a shared knowledge base and scientific modeling framework. The hard negotiations ahead to achieve detailed agreements on such things as reservoir operation policy, power trading, dam safety and irrigation practices will require that foreign policy and water experts from each of the three countries have a shared understanding of the technical issues and a willingness to compromise.

In May 2015, the three countries engaged technical consultants to assist with these problems, but that arrangement has since collapsed over disagreements about project management. It behooves the international community to help, through support of regional efforts like the Nile Basin Initiative, to build scientific and engineering coordination and knowledge among the three countries, provide impartial expertise, set up a management system and perhaps offer a process to resolve disputes.

The world needs to get good at sharing water, and right away. The alternative is frequent regional conflicts of unknowable proportions.

John H. Lienhard V is a professor at M.I.T. and director of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab. Kenneth M. Strzepek is a research scientist at the M.I.T. Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The latest Obama-Xi announcement sends a strong message: the two nations are acting fast to enable a global low carbon transition. Friday’s joint announcement is an unprecedented step by the world’s #1 and #2 emitters to commit, at the highest levels, to a strong set of domestic policies and to reinforce global mechanisms that will help to engage peers ahead of the upcoming landmark climate change negotiations in Paris. 

Pricing Carbon

Xi has committed China to launching a national emissions trading system for CO2 in 2017. An emissions trading system will directly constrain a large share of China’s CO2 emissions and, by putting a price on emissions, encourage reductions where they cost least. This is impressive in that China is pledging to reduce emissions at a time when its per-capita income is less than one-fifth of the U.S. and its economy faces headwinds. It recognizes the long-term benefits of action now—for local air quality, global climate, and its own long-term leadership in delivering innovative solutions that all nations will eventually need.

While China is not the first to establish an emissions trading system, China’s is likely to be the largest when it comes online in 2017. While the European Union has built an emissions trading system over the past two decades, the U.S. has so far not been successful in adopting a national system for greenhouse gases. In 2009 the Waxman-Markey Bill, which would have established an emissions trading system in the U.S., failed to pass Congress, leaving the U.S. to rely on a piecemeal approach that largely repurposed existing regulations, such as vehicle fuel economy standards and power plant emissions limits established under the Clean Air Act, to mandate CO2 emissions reduction. Indeed, these measures formed the cornerstone of the U.S. domestic action pledged on Friday, and they will have impact. However, an emissions trading system that could deliver the same reductions at lower aggregate cost has so far proven politically unpalatable. China’s latest move could prompt a rethink on emissions trading in the U.S.

Linking Global and Local Action

Along with a strong portfolio of coordinated domestic actions, Xi and Obama made progress on defining the architecture of a global climate agreement. The two leaders have agreed on the need for an enhanced system that monitors domestic action through reporting and review of progress, recognizing that some developing nations will still need time to put these capacities into place. Both sides also recognized the need to increase ambition over time. This is essential because even with all present contributions, the global emissions trajectory is not expected to bend down anytime soon. Recognizing that this will likely not be fully resolved in Paris, setting in place a timeline for assessing and revisiting commitments going forward will go a long way towards ensuring that the goal Xi and Obama reaffirmed at the outset of their remarks—deep reductions in GHG emissions that will markedly limit global temperature rise—does not slip off the radar.

Beyond generating momentum ahead of Paris, U.S.-China joint action will have far-reaching consequences at home when it comes to enabling a low carbon transition. Although many insiders anticipated that an emissions trading system in China would be established, efforts to codify this effort in a new Climate Change Law were moving more slowly—this high-level pledge will redouble the pressure. Beyond emissions trading, China has also pledged to promote “green dispatch” in the electricity sector, which will prioritize lower emitting plants. In China, generators are powerful interests entitled to supply a “fair share” of annual generation—now, their “fair share” will need to reflect environmental impact more strongly and directly.

Leading on Climate and Development

Perhaps the greatest promise of the latest announcement by China and the U.S. lies in its invitation to all parties to increase ambition, if not before Paris then as soon as possible as part of ongoing negotiations. On the eve of Paris, the world is poised to miss the 2 degree target—by a large margin. Stronger action will be needed by developed and developing countries alike. By committing to limit CO2 emissions, China has shown that domestic action on climate change does not need to undermine long-term development goals. In recent years, it has developed the domestic capability to assess—through research, modeling, and real-world experimentation—the advantages and disadvantages of various instruments for limiting fossil energy use and CO2 emissions. The results suggest that some opportunities, such as industrial energy efficiency and new energy development, can support cleaner air, better operational performance, and—in the case of, say, solar energy—open opportunities as a leading global provider of clean technology. Every developing country will have its unique set of opportunities. The architecture emerging on the road to Paris is shaping up in a way that will accommodate these differences, allowing the countries that are poised to grow the fastest over the next several decades to find ways to power this growth with clean, affordable, low carbon energy sources. Greater action from the developed world will also be essential. Ideally, the steps Xi and Obama have taken last week will inspire a broad-based, cooperative effort to deliver more than promised that carries both local and global benefits.

Dr. Valerie Karplus is a ChinaFAQs Expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is an Assistant Professor in the Global Economics and Management Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of the China Energy and Climate Project (CECP) at MIT.

ChinaFAQs is a project facilitated by the World Resources Institute that provides insight into critical questions about Chinese policy and action on energy and climate change. The ChinaFAQs network is comprised of U.S.-based experts, including researchers at U.S. universities and government laboratories, independent scholars, and other professionals.

Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy the Hague via Flickr Creative Commons License