Green Group discussion

Save the Sudd Swamp
Papyrus is a dominant plant in the Sudd in Southern Sudan, perhaps the largest freshwater swamp in the world. This swamp is now a pawn in a dramatic world-changing face-off between Africa and Egypt, a showdown that hopefully will end in a peacefully cooperative effort.

The story is a simple one, Egypt and Ethiopia are at odds over water in the Blue Nile. Ethiopia’s new Renaissance Dam is intended to control the flow, reduce loss by evaporation and slow the downstream loss of water storage. This is all to the good, but comes at a cost. While the megadam fills, Egypt must live with a decrease in Blue Nile water flow. Aljazeera (June 18, 2013) announced that foreign ministers from both countries have opened talks, and Bloomberg View (June 23, 2013) suggested that Ethiopia could bridge the divide by agreeing to fill the dam’s reservoir more slowly.

By cooperating with Ethiopia in this new effort, a war will be averted, but, in compensation, almost certainly Egypt will ask all parties to pressure the new nation of Southern Sudan to complete a canal that will drain the Sudd.

I remember reading about a CIA report over ten years ago about the potential for war in this area over water. It's only going to get worse. Draining the Sudd will accomplish nothing except to buy a little time.

As a boy, I loved swamps. They are so much fun to explore. It always saddens me to see such things happen. Are there any videos?

Thoreau the “Patron Saint of Swamps” because he enjoyed being in them and writing about them said, “my temple is the swamp… When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum… I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place…far away from human society. What’s the need of visiting far-off mountains and bogs, if a half-hour’s walk will carry me into such wildness and novelty.”

As for the Sudd here's a short video at http://tinyurl.com/suddreed

Also quite a few BBC video clips about the animals on You Tube wonderfully detailed film clips on YouTube showing the ecology of papyrus swamps, especially the weaver birds and boatmakers with their tanqwas on Lake Tana on the Blue Nile (http://tinyurl.com/l8guek7); a Shoebill fishing for a Lungfish in a papyrus swamps in the Southern Sudan on the White Nile (http://tinyurl.com/jvkppl7); the Nile Crocodile in action (http://tinyurl.com/lsl5hwo); and the people and wildlife of the Sudd (http://tinyurl.com/m4jul8c)

Thanks so much, John. I'm searching through these.

Keeping an eye on the Sudd Swamp on the White Nile in the southern Sudan is a difficult but important job. Home to over 400 bird and 100 mammal species. The Sudd supports the highest population of Shoebill Storks and the greatest numbers of antelopes in Africa. It is now in danger and so are the millions of birds that use the swamp during their migrations from Asia and Europe.
The Sudd, of which 57 million hectares was designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance in 2006, is located in the lower reaches of the White Nile, which flows north from Lake Victoria.
“The wetland as a whole and its dynamics have not been mapped repetitively or systematically,” explains Lisa-Maria Rebelo, a researcher in remote sensing at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She was being interviewed by Carolyn Fry for the Agriculture and Ecosystems Blog of CGIAR, a special feature for World Wetlands Day, called, “Seeing the Sudd from Space” at: http://tinyurl.com/suddread.
Rebelo reported that the wetland receives rainfall from the surrounding catchment and in-flows from Lake Victoria. It acts like a giant sponge, retaining water and releasing it slowly throughout the year. In this way, it regulates the flows of the White Nile. Early findings from Rebelo’s analyses of satellite data show the wetland has increased in size on an annual basis over the past ten years. This does not appear to be due to changes in rainfall patterns, so therefore must be related to changes in flow; however, more work is needed to find the exact reason.
Two civil wars, the first between 1955 and 1972 and the second from 1983 to 2005 have also contributed to the dearth of knowledge about the Sudd. The political instability culminated with South Sudan becoming an independent state in 2011, but gaining access to the wetland remains difficult. Rebelo recalled that “Many of the people we met in Sudan had grown up in or around the wetland and many of their cultural ceremonies were tied to it.”
Despite the wetland’s value, it faces a number of threats. In the 1980s, a 260km stretch of a planned 360km canal was dug, with the aim of diverting 4.7 billion cubic meters of water annually to Egypt and Sudan for irrigation. The project was halted by the civil war but if re-instigated could have drastic environmental consequences.
The Sudd can and should be saved, as explained in Papyrus: The Plant that Changed the World, From Ancient Egypt to Today’s Water Wars due out in June 2014 from Pegasus Books (http://tinyurl.com/goodreed)