Collaborative management of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam increases economic benefits and resilience

TLDR

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is reshaping Nile Basin water infrastructure, yet Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt lack consensus on its operation. The authors introduce a coevolutionary modeling framework to evaluate coordinated dam operation. The framework simulates the Nile River System and Egypt’s macroeconomy with dynamic feedbacks, treating the two systems as coevolving over multi‑year simulations. The coordinated strategy improves water supply to Egypt during scarcity and boosts Ethiopia’s hydropower generation and storage compared to a draft proposal.

Abstract

Abstract The landscape of water infrastructure in the Nile Basin is changing with the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Although this dam could improve electricity supply in Ethiopia and its neighbors, there is a lack of consensus between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt on the dam operation. We introduce a new modeling framework that simulates the Nile River System and Egypt’s macroeconomy, with dynamic feedbacks between the river system and the macroeconomy. Because the two systems “coevolve” throughout multi-year simulations, we term this a “coevolutionary” modeling framework. The framework is used to demonstrate that a coordinated operating strategy could allow the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to help meet water demands in Egypt during periods of water scarcity and increase hydropower generation and storage in Ethiopia during high flows. Here we show the hydrological and macroeconomic performance of this coordinated strategy compared to a strategy that resembles a recent draft proposal for the operation of the dam discussed in Washington DC.