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Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

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Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#131

Post by COGlory »

ilstormcloud wrote: post #101
test_epsilon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They generally found messes and left messes, sometimes better sometimes worse (depending on who you ask). You didn't think the Middle East, South America, Africa, subcontinent etc everyone just sat around singing kumbaya until "colonialists" came along did you? The "noble savage" is a thoroughly debunked, backward idea.

How is Egypt a mess before the British came exactly? How was India a mess?

Didnt egypt take on loads of debt, invade Ethiopa, get absolutely defeated, and then have their government collapse, which was the event that allowed the British to take over?

I'm no fan of colonialism, but does Egypt really count when they were basically already a modern western power?

Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#132

Post by Someone »

pasabagi wrote: post #87
sgift wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see a single dam aside from the GERD on the list that's on the Nile. So I don't see how you could say it's a lie. Are you suggesting a dam on any tributary river in Ethiopia is subject to Egypt's wishes? It sounds obvious to me that a dam on a tributary river to Nile is for the purpose of the problem here like a dam on Nile since it reduces the water available downwards in Nile.

I just had a look at the list, and I feel that looking at 'dams' is pretty misleading. The point is to look at capacity, no? I mean, nobody in their right mind cares if somebody builds a dam that has a capacity of half a cubic kilometer. So it's a weird dialogue: on the one hand, the only relevant dam, capacity-wise, is the GERD. On the other, there are patently plenty of other damns in the Nile river basin. (Obvious…

I’m not sure about that “totally solvable to mutual satisfaction.” Even if it there is enough water now and they can reach agreement on sharing the water’s advantages (which means Egypt has to give up something), looking at population growth (about 2% a year for Egypt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Egypt), 2.9% for Ethiopia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ethiopia), that can change rapidly.

If those growth rates continue the per capita amount of Nile water will halve in 25-30 years.

Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#133

Post by vidarh »

inglor_cz wrote: post #123
vidarh wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economy grew rapidly following the end of the Iran-Iraq war. You'd expect to see a rapid drop as the economy recovered. It is possible the policy changes also had an effect, but again the point is not that policy changes can't have an effect, but that we don't know.

IDK, a lot of other countries actually experienced a baby boom immediately after end of a war. There are pro-natality effects to a war->peace transition. Men coming back and wanting to leave the bad experience behind by founding families. End of rationing system for food and other life necessities. Real estate demand decreasing because a lot of young people were killed.

And yet this is not universal, so the point remains: We don't know very well which types of policies are effective at reducing fertility rate without resorting the really draconian, authoritarian methods like China did. The only other thing we know consistently correlates with dropping fertility rates, to the point that it contributes to us not knowing to what extent other policies works, is economic development.

To get it back to the subject at hand, the point is that the poster I originally replied to has no justification for the suggestion that this has to do with culture, even less so with bringing up Islam given they've since given three muslim countries as examples of places they claim are doing better (Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Jordan), misrepresented the data, and it's by no means clear what Egypt could have done differently that would have worked. Could they have tried more things? Sure. Might some of them have worked? Sure. But we don't know, and so blaming them for having had a brief dip in a multi-decade drop in fertility rates is unreasonable.

Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#134

Post by CountSessine »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #73
Popegaf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * More than half of Ethiopia's 110 million people have no electric power. > * Almost all of Ethiopia is under some level of food stress. Where is a country like Ethiopia getting all the money for such a mega-project? > * This happened due to Colonial era agreements in which great Britain Typical, colonial forces left a mess everywhere they went. India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, pretty much all of Africa, my histor…

>Where is a country like Ethiopia getting all the money for such a mega-project? The cost is $4.2 billion according to the article, and Ethiopia's GDP is $272 billion. It's not a mystery to see the project get financing, though I imagine the risk of war warped the deal somewhat.

Well that just makes me even more curious. How does a nation of 110 million, 70% of whom don’t even have access to electricity, have a GDP of $272 billion? $2700 GDP per capita would put Ethiopia in the ranks of the middle-income countries.

Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#135

Post by inglor_cz »

vidarh wrote: post #133
inglor_cz wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK, a lot of other countries actually experienced a baby boom immediately after end of a war. There are pro-natality effects to a war->peace transition. Men coming back and wanting to leave the bad experience behind by founding families. End of rationing system for food and other life necessities. Real estate demand decreasing because a lot of young people were killed.

And yet this is not universal, so the point remains: We don't know very well which types of policies are effective at reducing fertility rate without resorting the really draconian, authoritarian methods like China did. The only other thing we know consistently correlates with dropping fertility rates, to the point that it contributes to us not knowing to what extent other policies works, is economic development. To…

"The only other thing we know consistently correlates with dropping fertility rates, to the point that it contributes to us not knowing to what extent other policies works, is economic development."

Educational achievement of girls and women seem to be consistently correlated with dropping fertility rates as well. Of course, this is correlated with economic development as well.

Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#136

Post by boomboomsubban »

CountSessine wrote: post #134
boomboomsubban wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where is a country like Ethiopia getting all the money for such a mega-project? The cost is $4.2 billion according to the article, and Ethiopia's GDP is $272 billion. It's not a mystery to see the project get financing, though I imagine the risk of war warped the deal somewhat.

Well that just makes me even more curious. How does a nation of 110 million, 70% of whom don’t even have access to electricity, have a GDP of $272 billion? $2700 GDP per capita would put Ethiopia in the ranks of the middle-income countries.

I accidentally read the PPP GDP from Wikipedia, the nominal is $93 billion. Bottom 30 for GDP per capita. The point still stands though.

Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#137

Post by dang »

test_epsilon wrote: post #109
ilstormcloud wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Egypt a mess before the British came exactly? How was India a mess?

I'll assume you're genuinely ignorant and not asking rhetorical questions here. In which caseWikipedia gives a good starting point. Egypt: > Muslim rulers nominated by the Islamic Caliphate remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Caliphate under the Fatimids. With the end of the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco-Circassian military caste, took control about A…

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for—therefore we ban accounts that do it, regardless of which ideology they're battling for or against.

Please don't create accounts to do this on HN. It will eventually get your main account banned as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#138

Post by dang »

yunohn wrote: post #80
test_epsilon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They generally found messes and left messes, sometimes better sometimes worse (depending on who you ask). You didn't think the Middle East, South America, Africa, subcontinent etc everyone just sat around singing kumbaya until "colonialists" came along did you? The "noble savage" is a thoroughly debunked, backward idea.

Wow, didn’t realize there are racists like you on HN. Do you posit that the colonizers were born “noble” and the “savages” are just somehow so bad at handling their affairs? Please read more, and learn more, about the world’s history from a non-colonizer lens.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how bad another comment is or you feel it is. It only makes things even worse.

This is in the site guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#139

Post by dang »

NmAmDa wrote: post #53
ilstormcloud wrote: post #42

To provide the HN audience with a single data-point from Ethiopia. * More than half of Ethiopia's 110 million people have no electric power. * Almost all of Ethiopia is under some level of food stress. * The Nile basin contains some 11 countries * More than 80% of the Nile waters come out of Ethiopia * Some 70% of the rivers in Ethiopia are parts of the Nile basin * Out of these countries, only Egypt and Sudan use th…

It is amazing seeing how many lies can a single comment have > More than half of Ethiopia's 110 million people have no electric power Might be true but it is a wide problem and have a root causes that not all belong to the current issue, maybe you forget you are currently in a civil war with army have actions that are war crimes. >More than 80% of the Nile waters come out of Ethiopia Nile river is historically and fr…

Please make your substantive points without crossing into flamewar. The topics is obviously sensitive; most of us here don't know anything about it, and are here to learn. I understand what it's like to feel provoked by another comment that you consider misleading, but you hurt your case when you attack the other like this.

In particular, the word "lie" implies not just being wrong, but intentional deceit. Since we can't know others' intent via internet comments, that's rarely a fair word to use and it mostly just escalates flamewars.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

#140

Post by wetmore »

vagrantJin wrote: post #96
Popegaf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * More than half of Ethiopia's 110 million people have no electric power. > * Almost all of Ethiopia is under some level of food stress. Where is a country like Ethiopia getting all the money for such a mega-project? > * This happened due to Colonial era agreements in which great Britain Typical, colonial forces left a mess everywhere they went. India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, pretty much all of Africa, my histor…

> What's crazy is how things still are in such disarray so long after they retreated. I think it's adorable that you think they "retreated". Perhaps in another forum I can give you a "low-down" on why the African former colonies are an economic mess, why France and England left physically but not politically or economically, and ofcourse why African leaders visit European powers as one of the first things they do aft…

How about you actually talk about those things, instead of just alluding to them to make the person you're replying to seem small?
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