Grand Ethiopian Resonance Dam (GERD), the largest hydropower dam in Africa, has caused intense energy and water conflicts between Nile River countries. Scientists from around the world have conducted research and proposed solutions to help mitigate these conflicts. Dr. Jongeun You, assistant professor from the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Northern Michigan University, contributed to these scholarly efforts and co-authored a publication in Communications Earth & Environment, a Nature journal. It was recently selected as one of the Top 25 papers of 2024 by the journal.
The international team of scientists from the U.S., Belgium and Egypt dedicated their efforts to complement the decades-long negotiation and mediation processes regarding the GERD. Through rigorous assessments of various operation policies for GERD, the authors have put forth and quantified intermediate negotiation policies.
These newly proposed policies are intended to bridge the negotiation gap and achieve operation that benefits all parties, minimizing potential downstream impacts while optimizing upstream hydropower generation, especially during prolonged droughts.
“Our study offers four novel policies, aiming to establish a collaborative framework to mitigate the challenges posed by rising hydroclimatic fluctuations," said Dr. Essam Heggy, the publication's lead author and a Research Scientist at the University of Southern California. "We leveraged extensive datasets spanning more than a century of historical flow records to evaluate the variations in hydropower generation and reservoir levels in the Nile River.”
The authors employed a multi-reservoir hydraulic-energy model to simulate the energy and water response of the GERD in Ethiopia and the Aswan High Dam in Egypt to prolonged droughts. One of the suggestions by the authors is to use the water level of the Aswan High Dam as an indicator of extreme hydro-climatic conditions, rather than solely relying on the current flow of the Blue Nile to assess prolonged droughts.
“Although not every political science and public administration professor has to be involved in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics], evidence-based policymaking is closely connected to STEM," said Dr. Rob Winn, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at NMU. "At the same time, policymaking must consider the positive and negative impacts of technology on society, taking into account human dimensions. Dr. You incorporates his unique experience and expertise into teaching at Northern while also meeting real-world needs.”
Dr. You was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Hydrologic Science and Engineering Program at the Colorado School of Mines and previously worked for SK Engineering & Construction. He was also named a 2022 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Riser, a program that recognizes standout early career scientists working on national security issues.
Read the full journal article here.