Relating
back to my 3rd and 4th posts addressing problems and
solutions for the usage of transboundary aquifers, I have decided to focus on The
Nubian Aquifer System (NAS) for analysis. This non-renewable TBA in Northern
Africa is one of the largest globally (area of 2.6million+ km² and volume of 375,000km³
and lies beneath 4 countries – Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan, who are all
reliant upon it as a water resource (Voss and Solimon, 2013).
Figure 1
below illustrates the NAS (Voss and Solimon, 2013):
In 1993,
Libya went as far as building The Great Man-made River Project (GMRP), which
transported 6 million m³ of water every day from the
NAS. Egypt and Libya are currently the primary users of
this water resource and interestingly, despite it’s significance, there is no
binding legal framework over it’s sustainable and equitable usage (Maxwell,
2011).
I
personally think it’s preposterous that in this day and age, knowing how
important the NAS is, that there are still no binding legal treaties. I believe
that with this attitude, rich countries can easily help themselves to as much
water from this resource as they’d like without caring for the consequences of
their neighbours. Furthermore, as Maxwell (2011) points out, as the water
depletes, it will become more expensive to extract as the water level lowers.
This will have adverse effects on poor countries who will find it economically
unsustainable to continue extraction from this resource.
References:
Maxwell, N. (2011). The Nubian
Sandstone Aquifer System: Thoughts on a Multilateral Treaty in Light of the 2008 UN Resolution on the Law of
Transboundary Aquifers.
UN
News Service Section, (2013). UN News - Four African nations agree to
improve use of key water resource
under UN-backed plan. [online] Available at: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45877#.VpFDapOLSRs
[Accessed 4 Dec. 2015].
Voss, C. and Soliman, S. (2013). The
transboundary non-renewable Nubian Aquifer System of Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan: classical groundwater questions and
parsimonious hydrogeologic analysis and
modeling. Hydrogeol J, 22(2), pp.441-468.
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