Shared benefits not shared water - An interview with Kenneth Strzepek
Channel: UNU-WIDER
Date: 2016-10-21

Energy development is a key aspect of economic development. This was demonstrated in Egypt with the completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1965. The dam is a very important asset for the country, not only for irrigation, but also for the generation of electricity.

When the dam was built, Sudan and Egypt signed a treaty, which allocated all of the Nile water. The rest of the Nile basin nations such as Ethiopia were not part of this treaty.

MIT and UNU-WIDER work together at looking the economic-wide models of the countries involved in order to understand the value of water to their economies. The aim of the work is to have an economic perspective of the issue by applying to each one of the countries the tools developed in the UNU-WIDER’s DUCC – Development Under Climate Change project.

Kenneth Strzepek of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT discusses how this work is done and its importance in creating a basis for dialogue on regional cooperation.

0:16 What work are MIT and UNU-WIDER doing on the Nile?

More about the DUCC project: https://www.wider.unu.edu/project/ducc-development-under-climate-change
More about UNU-WIDER: http://www.wider.unu.edu
Music CC BY 3.0: Kevin MacLeod - At The Shore