Values of the Blue Nile

Abstract

The Blue Nile is characterised by growing tensions between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt related to increasing demands for water and upcoming unilateral developments. Growing efforts towards basin wide cooperation from the international and scientific community have led to the development of a common decision support tool, the Nile Basin Decision Support System (NBDSS), but applications are still limited. This thesis assumes that a discrepancy between values included in the design of the NBDSS and values that actually play a role in decision making might contribute to the lack of implementation. This assumption involves two important research gaps, namely the absence of a clear overview of values of decision makers in the Blue Nile countries and the capabilities of the NBDSS in considering all values in decision making. This thesis aims to fill these research gaps and finally test the assumption by evaluating the NBDSS from a value perspective. The evaluation uses four elements, namely design requirements to allow value considerations, design values of the NBDSS, actor values and associated potential conflicts and synergies. This thesis produced two main results that are valuable to the academic community, namely a list of values associated with water resources for each Blue Nile country and an evaluation of the NBDSS from a value perspective.
Literature review resulted in five design requirements: transparency, participatory development, flexibility, useful information and reasonable value judgements. Document analysis and model assessment yielded nine design values that should constitute the core functionalities of the system, namely economy, environment, equity, inclusiveness, international cooperation, society, sustainability, trust and usability. However, none of the analysed documents on the NBDSS talks about value considerations explicitly...