Prof D Chandrasekharam

“”Thus if Egypt’s al-Sisi feels he has Trump’s backing, he may be tempted to go to war over the

Nile. On paper, Egypt has a much stronger military than Ethiopia.”   Read a recent news item

(www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/07/17/

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/07/17/conflict-looms-for-egypt-and-ethiopia-over-nile-dam/)).

Why Egypt should go for war with Ethiopia.?

Conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia escalated in the recent times due to the construction of the Renaissance Dam (RD) over the Blue Nile by Ethiopia.  As I said in many of my blogs, future wars will be fought for water and food. The political and scientific analysis was made in a paper published by the author…..””Geothermal energy for sustainable water resources management  D. Chandrasekharam et al.,2019,INTERNATIONAL Jr OF GREEN ENERGY, https://doi.org/10.1080/15435075.2019.1685998”.

The gist of the paper is………… With ever-increasing population and steep declining freshwater supply, the future concern of MENA and Sub-Saharan countries is food security. Egypt is more vulnerable to food security due to the increased water rights being exercised by the countries sharing the Nile River. Assuming that Egypt by 2025 will achieve 1000 m³/y per capita consumption of water, with the population growing beyond 109 million, the water available by 2025 would be around 106 billion m³/y. With increasing pressure from the Nile River basin riparian countries (especially from Ethiopia), Egypt may not be able to manage with the current 58 billion m³ of water from the Aswan dam to achieve per capita goal. This situation is bothering Egypt for a longtime.

This becoming a fact with respect to the construction of the Renaissance Dam  on Blue Nile by Ethiopia. Finian Cunningham in “Strategic Culture Foundation” July 2020  wrote  (conflict looms for Egypt and Ethiopia over Nile Dam)  “Egypt has repeatedly challenged the project saying that it would deprive it of vital freshwater supplies. Egypt relies on the Nile for 90 per cent of its total supply for 100 million population. Last month foreign minister Sameh Shoukry warned the UN security council that Egypt was facing an existential threat over the dam and indicated his country was prepared to go to war to secure its vital interests.”

President of Egypt and the Prime Minister of Ethiopia are under political pressure to accomplish their task……Ethiopia wants to complete the dam on Blue Nile and Egypt wants to stall the progress of the dam. Compared to Egypt, Ethiopia is a poor country with low political support from external forces, while, the  statement in the above para clearly demonstrates who is powerful. 

There has to be  a political instability to stall any developmental activity.  This has come in the form of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). TPLF is not a new Front. It was and is fighting to liberate Tigray province. TPLF came handy for those opposing the dam. Whether TPLF has a external support or not is not the centre of issue of this blog. Massacare of civilian by the TPLF has become a political issue threatening the stability of the current Ethiopian.  At least for now the dam progress is stalled and the White Nile will gets its share from the Blue Nile.

However, The water situation for Egypt may improve over the next few years with Tanzania constructing one of the largest dams in East Africa that is proposed generate 2115 MWe. Construction of Hydropower dam in Rufiji-Tanzania- JNHPP 2115MW is the largest Hydropower Project in East Africa and has employed greater than  6000 people.  This is a welcome news for Egypt since Tanzania will not compete for Nile water for few decades!

But to maintain the current per capita water consumption of 636 m³/y Egypt may need about 1200 desalination plants and 200 × 10⁶ kWh electricity is required to operate these plants and the CO₂ emissions due to this process will be around 80–160 million tones. Electricity generated from hydrothermal sources can supply 659 billion  m³/year of desalinated water while the EGS can generate 58,400 billion  m³/y of desalinated water from the Red Sea. This will help the country to meet the current fresh water deficit of 48 billion  m³/y. By the year 2025, the demand for fresh water will be of the order of 106 billion  m³/y to maintain 1000 m³/y per capita water consumption. Egypt can set an example to MENA and Sub-Saharan countries by using geothermal energy for sustainable development and future water and food security”.  Waging a military war against Ethiopia is like using a missile to kill a sparrow!!! Egypt may intimidate Ethiopia, but the Nile is shared by 11 countries. Will Egypt wage a war against all these countries?.

All these countries have equal rights on the Nile. The Nile water scenario is fast changing. Ethiopia may not be using all the water saved from Blue Nile or from Awash river  but may allow other countries to use this water to grow food and supply to other food scare countries under VWT that is being in practice by many countries like China (Soya production in Brazil by China). Similar situation may happen with other countries like Uganda or Rwanda that occupies large area within the Nile River basin.  Thus, the water resources scenario for Egypt is not green like in the past. Egypt is already facing such water and food shortage issues and currently, due to expanding population and insufficient water and land for irrigation, 40% of Egypt’s population is below the poverty line and a large percentage of them live in rural areas with per capita water below 1000 m³ against the world average of 6000 m3. To meet the growing water demand, Egypt has commissioned several desalination plants, sourcing seawater from the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, saline groundwater from the coastal aquifers and irrigation return water. Egypt is the second-largest country among the Sub-Saharan countries generating large volumes of desalinated water from the Red Sea next only to Saudi Arabia. The capacity of the plants varies from 500 to 10,000 m³/day. Most of the desalination plants use RO technology (Reverse Osmosis). Using fossil fuel for desalination is not a cost-effective solution to solve this water problem. Neither waging war against neighbouring countries is a solution. For every small problem the country can not seek external help. If it does then besides food, it has to depend completely on external source for logistics. Adopting geothermal energy to generate desalinated water will benefit these countries in terms of cost and environment. The cost of supplying 20,000 m³/day of desalinated water using oil (fossil fuels) as the energy source would cost

about 200 million US $ while this will be about US$ 91 million for RO systems using seawater as the main feed. Between oil and coal, using coal as an energy source will be cheaper compared to oil, however using renewable sources like geothermal energy that can support baseload power and has >90% efficiency can solve the above cost and environmental issues. Energy requirement, CO₂ emissions and unit cost of desalination plants using conventional and renewable energy sources is shown below.

Instead of fighting for water and food security, initiating a system that will provide permanent security for water and food is better. Geothermal technology is ripe and can be bought off the shelf. 

As a reviewer, I review manuscripts (MS) for 31 top journals like J. Geophysical Research, Desalination, Energy, Allied Geophysics, Renewable and Sustainable and Energy Reviews, Applied Geochemistry, Geothermics, Applied Geochemistry; Geochemical Exploration;  Environmental Earth Sciences;  Arabian Journal of Geosciences;  Water Quality Research;  Process safety and Environmental protection;  Environmental Geochemistry and Health;  Journal of Hydrology; Management of Environmental quality;  Geofluids;  Water Resources Management;  Journal of African Earth Sciences;  Advances in Artificial Intelligence;  Applied Geophysics; Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology Paleoecology;  Geothermal Energy;  Current Science; Marine Georesources and Geotechnology;  Desalination;  Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews;  Hydrogeological Processes;  The Geological Society of India;  Physics and Chemistry of the Earth;  Water Air and Soil Pollution;  Geomechanics and geophysics for Geo-energy and Georesources;  Geophysical Research Letters and Colloid and Interface Sci.

Reviewers and Editor and Editorial Board contribute immensely for maintaining the scientific standard of Science and Engineering papers unlike the Predatory Journals (read https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-game-pjs-play/ ). In the year 2020, I reviewed 41 MS. Science (including Engineering) papers published in top journals carry a wealth of information, cutting across countries, religion, caste, and creed. No barriers to the flow of science. Because of this cross-pollination of scientific ideas man can discover new vaccines, resolve DNA codes, send satellites to space and send communications to any part of the universe, and many more.  The sacrifice made by the reviewers and the editors and the editorial board is immense……no measure to measure their contribution for the up-keep of humanity. A reviewer spends a considerable amount of time reviewing an MS…… its authenticity, background check on the authors’ publications, scientific content based on a thorough review of the literature.  Thus a reviewer while reviewing an MS has to go through a volume of literature to check the validity of the MS. A reviewer is final authority for an MS to be published. To reject a MS or to accept a MS is in the hands of a reviewer. So the responsibility of a reviewer is enormous. Patents are filed based on scientific investigation, new inventions are made based on publications. Take for example the current “Facebook” and “Whatsapp” (forgetting about the other controversial news items about these platforms which are being debated now ) and similar Apps did not fall from the sky like a shooting star!! They emerged based on science, based on an exchange of ideas, based on communication in print media, etc. True with Google. The authors spend an extensive amount of time and energy in writing a paper……..thinking about a problem, designing an experiment, conducting an experiment, checking the results, presenting the results with collaborators or colleagues or in conferences before making it into a scientific publication. Even the agencies funding the research do not ask for anything but a report from the authors or the investigator.

Such is the growth of science and scientists in the world.  These people do not get a single penny for the work except for their promotion which is their breadwinner.  These authors sacrifice by transferring copy-rights to the publishers too.

Now, who are the beneficiaries……all the publishing houses….Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, and all other such publishing houses?  They enjoy the benefits of the poor teacher, suck their blood and drop them like a hot potato.  Like “throwing crumbs  of bread to the barking dogs to salience them”, reviewers are given free access to any published papers through Science Direct for a month. Earlier when a author publishes a paper in a journal, he used to get a complimentary copy of the journal. This is slowly replaced by a free pdf copy of the paper. And now that is also gone. Only one link to the authors that he can share and people can read it online. Even the authors have to buy their publication once it is published. What a downfall to the scientific community.  These publishing companies virtually squeezed the scientific community who has no voice to express or represent.

Imagine if all the reviewers refuse to review the MS, where the world will be today?? Mankind would have been perished by now. In fact, when I was in my earlier reviewer career, I rebelled, wrote to the editor on why I should give my time free. Then I realized that this is for the benefit of humanity and I should not expect remuneration for the sacrifice I do. I silently fell online and started accepting MS for review from Editors.

Now there is one bright star that rose among the scientific world and scientific community in the name of Alexandra Elbakyan to fight for the cause of this silent sacrificing community. No arguments, no requests no email. She simply devised a method to download any scientific papers that are published free of cost. The publishing giants could not digest her service to science. She shook the publishing houses. They lost the war and ran behind the courts like cowards. Instead of running to the courts, these scrupulous “houses” should have found a way to come over this problem. The publishing houses make a fortune at the expense of the scientists. They out-source the work to developing countries and further make money from cheap labour. Disgusting attitude.  The courts should thrash their petition…..even the lawyers once, I am sure must be a victim to this cruelty of publishing houses. The courts should allow Sci-hub in all the countries. The publishing houses should be asked to pay a royalty to the authors for the work published in their journal. Time has changed and I am sure several Alexandra Elbakyan will  rise from the ground in support of the science and scientific community. Alexandra Elbakyan herself faced a tough situation while doing her graduation. She is a IT graduate specialized in info-security. She worked on brain-machine interface and developed a system that can use brainwaves as password. What a wonderful technology!! She found it difficult to get published literature related to her field due to inaccessibility of papers published in journals. Her frustration led her to develop software that can help researchers to download whatever scientific literature researchers need freely. This is how Sc-Hub emerged

While giving an interview to https://science.thewire.in Alexandra said “Today, most scientists view the academic publishing system as fundamentally unjust and exploitative. The problem is that publishers are not actual creators of these works, scientists are – they do all the work, and academic publishers simply use their position of power in the Republic of Science to extract unjust profits. Sci-Hub does not enable piracy where creative people are deprived of the reward they deserve. It is a very different thing”.  She is right. She continues “ What does one mean by the word ʻpiracyʼ? Only after several years was I able to comprehend how some people use this word in a bad sense. Most scientists do not care about the legal status at all. They want to do science, and they need to access academic literature to do it, and these legal things — they are in a different reality that scholars do not belong to at all, another planet or a different universe……Researchers do the actual work: they invent the hypothesis, do the experiments and write the articles describing the results of these experiments. Then they publish this article in an academic journal. They cannot simply put this article online on their blog: to be recognized as research work, it must be published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal. So they send their articles to publishers like Elsevier, Wiley, or Springer…… Publishers send articles they have received to other scientists for peer-review. Reviewers give their opinion on whether the work should be accepted in a journal or not, or if some additional work must be done. Based on these reviews, the article is published or rejected”

“Because most academic works and the most popular works in Sci-Hubʼs database are from these publishers, and Elsevier is the leading one in numbers. These companies form an oligopoly that currently controls all academic communication. These publishers alone perhaps control the majority of science. They are key players.  The Sci-Hubʼs view is that science should not be controlled by a few big companies but it should be a dynamic network of learned societies.” says Alexandra Elbakyan. She is right…..it is science for the benefit of people.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/carbon-neutrality-carbon-dioxide-emissions-carbon-dioxide-removal/

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/west-africa-how-to-be-free-from-food-slavery/

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/mesopotamian-barter-system-and-food-security/