Management of complex and international water bodies, e.g. Nile River and Lake Victoria, has to take in consideration the multiple benefits and ...

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Management of complex and international water bodies, e.g. Nile River and Lake Victoria, has to take in consideration the multiple benefits and the diverse interests of stakeholders of the countries sharing such common resources. Most often such rersources are understood as water resources while there are many other strategic values of benefits for other sectors, e.g. energy, tourism, transport, agriculture, industry, ..... . The national use and abuse of such international, common and complex natural resources has dynamic short-term and long-term impacts on status of water and associated ecology on the whole water body. Understanding of the functioning and metabolism of such complex water systems has to based on comprehensive studies of the spatio-temporal changes in these systems from natural changes (environmental and climate) and human activities (waste, sanitation, industrial, tourism, transport, ....... etc.

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  1. I fully agree with you, Farid! Right today I was reading this article http://bit.ly/S8SAGd about the difficulties in reaching an agreement on cross-border water management on the Nile. The tension between the Nile countries is clear and the development plans of Ethiopia, above all, and Uganda will certainly affect water availability as well as the downstream ecology and economic activities. For the Nile, as well as many other shared basins, the question is how to promote effective collaboration. Many studies show that larger benefits than costs would arise from international collaboration... but why this is often not the case? Thanks for your view!