304 Scarcity and Surfeitcomprises seven projects, including the Nile Trans-boundary Environmental
Action; Nile Basin Regional Power Trade; Efficient Water Use for Agricultural
Production; Water Resources Planning and Management; Confidence-
Building and Stakeholder Involvement; Applied Training and Socio-Economic
Development and Benefit Sharing. The indicative cost to implement the
above seven projects is estimated at approximately US$ 122 million.
As indicated earlier, negotiation on establishing a cooperative framework
is ongoing, with the support of the UNDP since 1995 (Project D3). The main
purpose of the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework is to agree upon a
set of legal and institutional principles on the basis of which future coopera-
tion on the use and management of Nile waters is to proceed. A panel of
experts composed of three members from each Nile Basin country was
formed in 1997 to establish a set of commonly agreed legal and institutional
principles to cooperatively manage the Nile waters. Although agreement was
reached on some provisions, there are still disagreements on some substan-
tive issues in the document. The issues that remain unresolved relate to the
status of existing agreements, the relationship between the principle of equi-
table entitlement and the obligation not to cause significant harm, as well as
procedures related to planned projects within the Nile Ba~in."~ As in the
past, Egypt and Sudan are opposed to any reduction of their allocation of
waters under the 1959 agreement. Meanwhile, upstream riparian states
demand a new water sharing agreement.
Of particular significance are the subsidiary action programmes which aim
to identify water resource development projects at the sub-basin level involv-
ing two or more countries and to account for " ... benefits and effects of
planned activities on other countries':220 Possible development projects are
hydropower development and interconnection, irrigation and drainage, envi-
ronmental management, river regulation, drought and flood control, and
water use efficiency improvements. Accordingly, the subsidiary action pro-
grammes were developed on the basis of two distinct sub-basins, namely, the
Eastern Nile Subsidiary Action Programme (ENSAP) comprising Egypt,
Sudan and Ethiopia, and the Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action
Programme (NELSAP) comprising Burundi, the Democratic Republic of
Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Egypt and Sudan also joined
as participants in the development of the programme in November 2000.
The ENSAP (which includes Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt) identified a set of
seven major sub-projects deemed to be mutually beneficial to all basin coun-
tries. These include: the Eastern Nile Planning Model Sub-Project; Baro-Akobo
Multi-purpose Water Resources Development Sub-Project; Flood Preparedness
and Early Warning Sub-project; Ethiopia-Sudan Transmission Interconnection
Sub-Project; Eastern Nile Power Trade Investment Programme, Irrigation and
Drainage Sub-Project; and the Watershed Management Sub-Project. Of these,
four (Eastern Nile Planning Model; Flood Preparedness and Early Warning;