Effectively Administering the Commons: Structural Analysis of the Nile River Basin Governance Network

Effectively Administering the Commons: Structural Analysis of the Nile River Basin Governance Network

by James Powers

I will be taking the second module of the course.

Introduction

As populations grow at increasing rates and climate change threatens stability and resource availability, the management and distribution of cross-boundary freshwater resources will be an increasingly complex problem faced by developing countries. The Nile River Basin is shared by 11 countries in central and northeastern Africa. The manner in which organizations from each of these countries work together as a single institution will determine their effectiveness in managing Nile Basin freshwater resources. Innovative structural arrangements must be developed and strengthened in order to ensure cross-boundary natural resources are governed in a sustainable and efficient manner.

In 1999, the Nile Basin states formed the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), an effort to achieve sustainable development by way of equitable use of Nile resources. The NBI supports cooperative water projects and also works toward new legal and institutional frameworks for the Nile Basin. The NBI will form a core part of the “institution” as framed in this paper.

This paper will use social network analysis (SNA) to determine various structural characteristics of what will be called in this paper the Nile Basin Governance Network (NBGN). The general assumption inherent in this study is that the nature of connections between the organizations that comprise the NBGN defines how and what international water policy is created. The NBGN will be analyzed at the network level and at national and sub-regional levels because the sustainable management of these resources are a product not only of how all 11 countries interact within that bounded network, but also of the water policy decisions made by sub-groups of partner countries and individual nations. The organizations involved in the NBGN will serve as the nodes of the network, rather than individual actors. Ties will illustrate formal communication channels (such as in-person and remote meetings, summits, workshops, etc.), with a scale for frequency of communications. This empirical network data will allow for the analysis of the institutional capacity of the NBGN for sustainable management and distribution of the Nile’s freshwater resources.

Research Questions

What do the formal structural features of the Nile Basin Governance Network (NBGN) tell us about the potential for effective and sustainable management and distribution of freshwater resources? How does the formal structure of the network impact Nile Basin countries differently? And to what extent is SNA a useful tool for examining non-formal international networks as though they are both formal and bounded?

Hypothesis

At the national level, the extent to which individual countries are able to secure advantageous rights to Nile Basin resources is determined by their connectedness to the formal structure of the NBGN. At the international (whole network) level, the extent to which resources are distributed in a sustainable way is determined by the network’s cohesiveness.

Data

The Nile River is one of the most studied waterways in the world due to its importance to a large region of Africa, including the strategically important country of Egypt. As such there have been a number of studies of the organizations that govern the management and distribution of the Nile. While no single source has yet been identified that ties the various organizations into a cohesive picture, the abundance of data at the country and treaty level is substantial. I have concluded this proposal with several important sources, but this is just a sample. While acquiring an accurate picture of the organizations involved in the NBGN will be relatively simple, identifying the specific communication patterns among those organizations will depend on the countries in question and will need to be inferred to a certain extent based on past patterns and future pledges.

Important Network Measures

Certainly the whole-network density measures will be an important indicator of how cohesively the NBGN works as one institution. Centralization measures will be utilized to examine the heterogeneity of the network. Measures of hierarchy may also prove important in understanding the extent to which various actors provide and are receptive to input. The degree and betweenness centrality measure of individual organizations may prove interesting with regard to understanding the positioning of various countries in the NBGN. As the extent to which within-country water management mirrors the international water management is most likely – at least partially – a function of the water management information that flows into the national water governance organizations, in-degree eigenvector measures may be indicative of this attribute.

In order to truly get a sense of the NBGN as an “institution,” more than just SNA would be required. For example, a number of scientific data points about water level ranges at different times of year and how those levels are trending would be important. Qualitative and quantitative water policy data from each of the 11 countries would help to create a more accurate picture of challenges and opportunities. A comparison to the institutions governing other trans-boundary water resources would be immensely helpful, including SNA.

Conclusion

This paper will seek to provide some conclusions about the structural aspects of the NBGN that may help to explain the extent to which it is not entirely successful in sustainably managing and distributing the Nile’s freshwater resources. Additionally, SNA will shed light on some of the relative positions of countries and their representative organizations in the NBGN. Furthermore, the paper should be able to draw some conclusions about the effectiveness of using SNA to examine institutions that do not have a formal network boundary.

Sources

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2. Hagos, Fitsum, Amare Haileslassie, Seleshi Bekele Awulachew, Everisto Mapedza, and Tesfaye Taffesse. 2011. Land and water institutions in the Blue Nile Basin: Setups and gaps for improved land and water management. Review of Policy Research 28 (2): 149-70.

3. Luzi, Samuel, Mohamed Abdelmoghny Hamouda, Franziska Sigrist, and Evelyne Tauchnitz. 2008. Water policy networks in Egypt and Ethiopia. The Journal of Environment & Development 17 (3): 238-68.

4. Melesse, Assefa M., Wossenu Abtew, and Shimelis G. Setegn. 2014. Nile River Basin: Ecohydrological Challenges, Climate Change and Hydropolitics. Cham: Springer.

5. Suvarna, Shreevani. 2006. Development aid in an environmental context: Using microfinance to promote equitable and sustainable water use in the Nile Basin. Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 33 (2): 449.

6. Tvedt, Terje. 2010. The River Nile in the post-colonial age: Conflict and cooperation among the Nile Basin countries. London: I. B. Tauris.

7. Varis, Olli. 2000. The Nile Basin in a global perspective: Natural, human, and socioeconomic resource nexus. Water International 25 (4): 624.

8. Yohannes, Okbazghi, and Keren Yohannes. 2013. Turmoil in the Nile River Basin: Back to the future? Journal of Asian and African Studies 48 (2): 195-208.