Managing Nile's water resources sustainably - developing a strategy for the Nile Basin Initiative

The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is an inter-governmental organisation dedicated to equitable and sustainable management and the development of the shared water resources of the Nile basin. Since its establishment in 1999 by ministers responsible for water affairs in each of the nine member countries, the institution has been closely cooperating with the international donor community. Through GIZ, adelphi has been repeatedly contracted to assist the NBI in advancing cooperation in the Nile basin. In the current project, adelphi, in cooperation with regional experts, developed the State Of the Nile Basin Report (SOB) 2020 (forthcoming). The SOB aims to inform regional decision-making by providing factual information on the current state of key basin biophysical and socio-economic variables and indicators, and by examining current and emerging trends in the whole basin (pressures, threats and opportunities).

Based on six development goals (water security, power security, food security and agricultural development, environmental sustainability, transboundary water governance, climate change) outlined in the 10-Year Strategy of the NBI (2027) and the Nile Basin Strategic Action Plan, central socio-economic and biological-physical indicators were established, which serve to record and analyse the current state of the basin. Simultaneously, these indicators provide the basis for a long-term NBI monitoring mechanism. 

On the basis of these results, assessments were undertaken about current pressures, threats and development opportunities in the Nile Basin. The analysis of the indicators was also used to demonstrate complex causal relationships between actions of different stakeholders (including NBI) and their impact on socio-economic and environmental developments in the river basin. All results were fed into the basin report which features various maps and informative graphs. In a final step, adelphi prepared guidelines for a regular monitoring mechanism through which the Nile riparian states, in the future, will regularly report to the NBI.