State of the River Nile Basin Report 2021

adelphi supports efforts to improve the knowledge basis vital to the sustainable management of Africa’s longest river. Tying in with previous projects carried out in the basin, this project commissioned by Nile Basin Initiative contributes to ensuring future water security.

The State of the River Nile Basin Report 2021 provides a foundation for evidence-based decision-making in managing the basin’s environment, and especially water resources, sustainably. It assesses the state of the rivers, lakes and wetlands, identifies developments and trends that affect them and derives recommendations on how to overcome emerging threats and challenges. Carried out every three years and set up as a long-term intervention, such baseline assessments help to inform new policies and strategies, the planning and design of water resources management and development activities and support transboundary cooperation among different stakeholders.

This second Nile State of Basin Report is meant to be part of the suite of basin monitoring tools. The report gives policy makers, senior government officials, and the international development community a basis for well-informed decision-making.

Prof. Seifeldin Hamad Abadalla

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NILE BASIN INITIATIVE

Overcoming water challenges through data-driven decision-making

While the Nile is endowed with rich environmental resources and harbours high levels of biodiversity, sustaining millions of livelihoods in the basin based on subsistence farming and fishing, human activities such as agriculture and hydropower threaten the functioning and integrity of its ecosystems as never before, and therewith, water security.

As such, the need for river basin organisations like the NBI to monitor and evaluate ongoing developments and their effects on the basin’s environment, as well as to track progress towards achieving policy objectives, is critical while growing. This is why international donor organisations, like the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in the case of this project, supports the generation of data and its use in water-related decision-making in a growing number of global river basins.

Water security involves tackling complex and interconnected resource challenges in an integrated way, since water is fundamental to any aspect of human well-being and development, to multiple sectors, from agriculture to energy, as well as to achieving various sustainable development goals. Some of the most important messages and results the report stress to further mainstream an integrated, sustainable and climate-resilient water management approach in the Nile Basin include the following:

What was adelphi’s role in the project?

As the project lead, adelphi coordinated the research and development for the report The State of the River Nile Basin 2021 in collaboration with the Nile Basin Initiative, the GIZ and regional experts.

How is the report structured?

Guided by six strategic priorities identified in the Nile Basin Initiative’s 10-year Strategy for the period 2017–2027 the report is structured along six themes:

• water security
• energy security
• agricultural development and food security
• environmental sustainability
• climate change; and
• transboundary governance.

For each of these themes, the current state, main trends, drivers of change, and management responses have been identified.

Long-standing support of transboundary water cooperation in the Nile Basin

adelphi has over 10 years of experience in policy consulting on transboundary water cooperation in the Nile Basin. Shortly after plans for constructing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam have been revealed in 2011, adelphi advised the German Foreign Office on how its diplomatic approach could be adapted to deal with growing hydro-political tensions.

In another project for German Foreign Office, adelphi is currently preparing a policy paper on lessons learnt on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam conflict and a way forward for hydro-diplomacy, with a focus on actions Germany and the EU could take. adelphi has also conducted a similar baseline assessment for the Shabelle river basin in Somalia, including the development of an integrated resource water management based action plan for the Somali Federal Ministry of Energy and Water Resources.