The Waters Of Life

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Yes, but the impacts of such development will be immense, ranging from the destruction of wildlife habitat to the loss of sediment transfer — the natural movement of soil downstream to create alluvial floodplains that farmers have relied upon for centuries. Thousands of villagers would have to be relocated to make room for dams and reservoirs, and many would still not benefit directly from new power production because most of the electricity would be used in cities, not in rural areas. Environmentalists are also skeptical that the ambitious integrated scheme would ever work. "It's pie-in-the-sky stuff," says Lori Pottinger, director of the Africa program at the International Rivers Network (IRN), an environmental group based in California. "It assumes that a lot of things are going to go very well, and history shows us with big projects like these, big dams, that it won't."

Exhibit A for both sides of the debate is the unbuilt Bujagali Dam in Uganda. Planned before the NBI even began, Bujagali was put on hold four years ago after one of its contractors was involved in allegations of corruption. The dam, which will generate around 200 MW of much-needed power for Uganda when it is eventually built, will also drown a series of large rapids that roil the Nile and have become one of Uganda's biggest tourist attractions. Hitesh Vora, manager of Equator Rafts and the Speke Camp, which overlooks the falls, is in two minds about the dam. "We definitely need more power," he says. "But perhaps there are other sites further down the river." Others are even less upbeat. "I don't support it because I will no longer be able to work as I have been," says Mohammed Kasango, 16, who lives in a local village and swims the rapids for tourist tips. "I have nothing to gain from the electricity. I do not have it at my home."

Those opposed to dams say projects such as Bujagali are misguided. Frank Muramuzi, executive director of Uganda's National Association of Professional Environmentalists, says that Nile governments should be looking at geothermal and solar-power generation. "We run the risk of building these huge white elephants that benefit factories and cities but not the people who need [power]," he says.

That is precisely what locals in Tis Abay, a town next to the Blue Nile Falls in Ethiopia, believe happened when a new power station was opened three years ago. Water from the Nile is now diverted away from the falls to generators, most of whose power is exported to the nearby regional capital and into the national power grid. The diversion of the river has reduced the once powerful falls to little more than a trickle. Local tourist operators complain that their livelihoods have been destroyed. "Now there is nothing," says Gedefe Fetene, 40, a local farmer. "The beauty is gone."

So it may be. But proponents of more development say big projects are the only way to generate enough power to kick-start the region's economy. The NBI's Kahangire, the World Bank's Grey and other backers of a grand Nile project say that desperately poor countries like Uganda and Ethiopia need the chance to build dams and develop just as the rich world did a century ago. Rapid population growth in such countries — according to the United Nations, Ethiopia's population of 77 million people is expected to more than double to 170 million by 2050, while Uganda's 29 million people will grow to 127 million in the same period — are adding to problems like hunger and soil erosion. Building dams to power factories and houses, say the dams' advocates, is a quicker way to reduce poverty than pursuing small-scale geothermal or solar projects, or keeping the river for tourists. "We value the [Bujagali] falls, but development is about making options and choices," says Kahangire from his office overlooking Lake Victoria in Entebbe, Uganda.

Some in the rich world agree. In his 2004 book, The World's Banker, on former World Bank president James Wolfensohn, journalist Sebastian Mallaby argues that NGOs often do more harm than good to the world's poor. Uganda's National Association of Professional Environmentalists, he wrote, was a tiny single-issue group that, with the backing of Western NGOs (including the IRN), was able to halt a project that could help millions. "This story is a tragedy for Uganda. Clinics and factories are being deprived of electricity by Californians whose idea of an electricity crisis is a handful of summer blackouts," wrote Mallaby in an article based on his book.

Nonetheless, the environmental debate is certain to continue. A recent IRN report says half the dramatic drop in Lake Victoria's water level is caused by Uganda taking more water than it agreed to. Kenya and Tanzania claim the drop has reduced hydropower generation, causing outages. Mohammed Kassas, a Nile expert at Cairo University, questions whether the Nile Basin countries can be trusted to protect the environment in their quest for rapid development. "If it is done in the framework of sustainable development, then it would be O.K.," he says. "But if every country goes ahead, doing as it likes, natural systems tend to kick back."

The World Bank's Grey says that coordinating development through the NBI will actually help the environment. If each country went its own way, he says, the inevitable duplication would damage the river a lot more than one region-wide scheme. The World Bank, he says, is "unequivocally" back in the game of financing large dams. Grey says the Bank has learned from earlier mistakes, when dams benefited big investors and not the rural poor they were supposed to help — a point many environmentalists dispute. "It's arrogant to say that we've learned from the past," says Liane Greeff, who works for a South African NGO called the Environmental Monitoring Group and is highly critical of World Bank–backed dams in Africa. "We may have learned a little bit, but not enough to make things better for average people."

The IRN's Pottinger says the dam lobby often labels concerned environmentalists — incorrectly — as antidevelopment. "Calling us anti-poor is a very easy way to dismiss our concerns," she says. "But all we're doing is looking for ways to help poor people that don't have so many destructive elements." Grey says that Westerners criticizing poor countries trying to develop are applying double standards: "Either those Western countries [and environmentalists against developing the Nile] are saying that developing countries do not have the capacity to develop their resources, or they are saying that they do not deserve to develop their resources."

Development is on the minds of the priests of the Church of Narga Selassie. Standing inside the round building, its walls covered in vividly colored paintings of Bible stories, its air filled with a heady mix of burning frankincense and the fresh straw thatch used in the roof, Father Moges says he would like the government to buy the priests a faster boat so more tourists could visit their church. Electricity, he says, would be a miracle. "We learn from our grandfather and our father that this river crosses many countries," he says slowly. "But even they do not own it. God made it and it belongs to God. Nobody can call it their own." Whether it is owned by God or man, the next few years will determine the future of the river that spills from the lake a few kilometers away.