Aquaplan project

Abstract. The upper Blue Nile river basin in Ethiopia is a largely untapped resource despite its huge potential in terms of hydropower generation and irrigated agriculture. The numerous infrastructural development projects that are on the drawing boards are likely to generate both positive and negative externalities downstream in Sudan and Egypt. This study attempts at valuing, in economic terms, the benefits and costs of coordinated basin-wide allocation policies, and of storage capacity in Ethiopia. Economically efficient allocation policies are determined with the help of a stochastic hydrologic-economic optimization model for three infrastructural/management scenarios. The study reveals that the development of infrastructures in the upper part of the Eastern Nile basin is likely to provide 2 to 5 billion US$ of potential net benefits annually depending on the hydrologic conditions. The average net benefits associated with new storage capacities in Ethiopia would be around 1 billion US$/year. Should the operation of the reservoirs be coordinated, they would also enable 90% of the time an annual saving of at least 2.5 billion cubic meters through reduced evaporation losses from the High Aswan Dam.

 

Keywords: water resources management, Eastern Nile basin, cooperation benefits, hydro-economic optimization,storage value

 

Claire Halleux (MSc student, Department of Environmental Sciences and Land Use Planning - Université catholique de Louvain) was hosted by IWMI (International Water Management Institute) at Addis Abeba (Ethiopia) to collect information on the Blue Nile river basin.

 

 

This MSc thesis is supervised by Amaury Tilmant (UNESCO-IHE) , Yasir Mohamed (IWMI),  Quentin Goor and Didrik Pinte

 

The figure below represent one of the analysed develpment scenario of the Nile river basin.