ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT WAGE SLOW WAR OVER NILE RIVER WATER RIGHTS: Whiskey’s for drinking. Water’s for fighting. When it comes to the world’s longest river, there’s a lot of water to fight about.

Human survival, individual and societal, requires water. Just ask Egyptians. At least 7,000 years of life on the Nile has proven the adage “Egypt is the Nile” to be true. From Aswan north to Alexandria, the green band bordering the great river is home to 90% of Egypt’s population.

Twenty-first-century Egypt still confronts pharaoh-era East African geographic and climactic facts. Egypt gets 80% to 90% of its annual water needs from the Nile.

Egypt and Ethiopia have been confronting each other for well over a decade, as Ethiopia built the GERD, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The GERD now dams “the Blue Nile River near the Sudan border. This month, Ethiopia began filling the dam’s reservoir, which could ultimately hold 75 billion cubic meters of water.”

The column discusses the water conflict and a framework for resolving it.