 The issue with the Nile is that it is a transboundary river that flows between countries and the source of the water upstream and the major uses historically have been downstream and now the upstream countries would like to use some of that water while the downstream countries do not want to be harmed by their use. And it is very tricky because the Nile has two major branches, the white Nile which comes from the equatorial lakes and then there is the blue Nile which comes from the Ethiopian plains and the blue Nile provides for Sudan and Egypt more than 70% of the total amount of flow. Currently the Ethiopians have under construction the second largest dam in Africa, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Upon its completion that will have an impact on the flow of water to Egypt. So we're now facing a crisis. There is no recognized treaty among the countries on how to share the Nile. Egypt and Sudan unilaterally in 1959 claimed all the water. Ethiopia now wants to build this dam on its border with Sudan to produce hydropower. It is almost 70% complete. The crisis becomes when it is complete and they start filling it. There is currently no agreement on how to manage that to avoid serious impacts to Egypt and Sudan. As in all conflicts and negotiations both sides are disagreeing with the facts of the others. So I've been involved in an international effort to have a non-partisan unbiased analysis by outsiders of the scope of this project. There was a workshop held at MIT three years ago and now through efforts funded by UNU wider we're trying to look at not just the water issues but the economic issues that this will imply for both Egypt and Ethiopia. The three governments Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have come to a framework agreement which is a principle but the real issue are the numbers. And so we're trying to work on getting objective numbers that all sides can agree so they can start working from to quantify what really are the impacts on Egypt and what will Ethiopia lose in terms of revenue if they were to follow those procedures. So we have a starting point for coming to a negotiated settlement. One of the themes of the Nile Basin Initiative has been shared benefits not shared water. So one of the things that we're working on now is how to share the benefits from this dam in Ethiopia that will allow those benefits to go to Egypt and to Sudan say in the form of hydroelectricity and that way Egypt can use see that as a positive thing receiving that. In Ethiopia we'll see its investment return that they have been looking for for developing their resources. Energy is an important driver in economic development so sharing a new source of hydropower clean energy in the eastern Nile should be beneficial to all parties and they should be able to get a win-win in that area. Egypt as it looks to its future is in any kind of agreement is signing away part of its economic future to the goodwill of Ethiopia in the agreement on how to operate the dam. Ethiopia at the same time is counting on its investment being a positive one by having customers for the for the hydropower and the benefits that come from that. Both sides need to develop trust beforehand that this agreement will work. However in the light of climate change which is coming the basic premises of on which this agreement has been made will be changing and if there is not trust each side will be blaming the other for what is a natural condition rather than something which was part of the operation of the dam by the Ethiopians. So developing that trust is really important to get an agreement to operate the dams and to deal with the future risk of climate change for all the countries and a regional development.