Conclusion: public perceptions and the way forward for Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia
Welcome to my last post! Throughout this blog, I have tried to understand the hydropolitical challenges of the Nile basin, especially linked with the GERD. There is a lot that I wasn’t able to cover, and this is what I will turn to in this last post. One very interesting aspect that I couldn’t explore in more detail is the populations’ perceptions of the issue and how public reaction affects decision making in government. In Egypt for example, the strongly anchored belief that the GERD presents a mortal threat to the country means that every concession the government makes to Ethiopia further damages people’s trust in them. Wheeler et al. (2020) add a contribution from behavioural economics to argue that people feel losses stronger than gains, and that this skewed perception could have very negative impacts. Indeed, social media means that a ‘water panic’ in Egypt could spread very quickly and create a very unstable situation in the country. Furthermore, local and internal politics is