
Death of the Nile - dberhane
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/death_of_the_nile
======
baxtr
This is very sad and sickening. I wonder where we are headed with this. I hope
that these countries will somehow start treating this stream as scarce
resource, but I believe western style environmentalism is quite a stretch. If
the Nile collapses Europe will see refugees streams of unimaginable magnitude.

~~~
calcifer
> If the Nile collapses

When, really.

> western style environmentalism is quite a stretch

Africa's natural resources have been raped and pillaged by the west for many
decades. Even today, most people in the west simply don't realize how the
effects of that era are still felt strongly. Millions living under extreme
poverty do not have the luxury of thinking about the environment when the
price of that thought is not putting food on the table. Same can be said for
the massive population growth. Birth control requires education, which
requires prosperity, which Africa lacks almost completely.

> If the Nile collapses Europe will see refugees streams of unimaginable
> magnitude.

As someone in Western Europe who definitely believes this day will come,
_soon_ , I can only say we reap what we sow. The crimes of past European
powers (think Belgian Congo for a single example) are slowly but surely
catching up with the current generation and I think it's way too late to avoid
the consequences.

~~~
UweSchmidt
"We reap what we sow" assumes an old testament concept of multi generational
collective guilt and picturing your migration scenario penance, or divine(?)
punishment sounds a little weird.

Also, give Africa a little credit, literacy rates are up, maybe the problems
can be tackled right over there?

[https://ourworldindata.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/03/ourwor...](https://ourworldindata.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/03/ourworldindata_literacy-rate-by-age-in-middle-east-
and-northern-africa.png)

~~~
babygoat
How about “Our children reap what we sow”?

~~~
UweSchmidt
How about trying to correctly attribute guilt to specific persons, committing
specific crimes instead?

Geopolitics is complicated and neither of us can take very little credit/guilt
for the actions of any political entity that I happen to be part of.

~~~
eropple
The economic if-thens are not moral (well, they are, but not in this sense).
The idea that they have a bearing on guilt is projective.

To be fair, you should feel guilty, and so do I, and I work to push back on my
own country's historical indecencies.

~~~
dmpk2k
He should feel proud of vaccines and antibiotics too then, the greatest boon
mankind ever had. _Very_ proud indeed. The populations in Africa would be a
tiny fraction of what they currently are were it not for Western innovations.
Likewise, the West has utterly crushed global absolute poverty, and is the
leading pressure that is trying to end the ancient practice of slavery.

By every objective metric (child mortality, lifespan, literacy, starvation,
absolute poverty), the world is a better place today than ever before. By a
_huge_ margin. Entirely thanks to the West.

I only mention this because there seems to be this narrative that we in the
West should feel bad for the past, yet the West has been a firm net positive
in the world. Probably the greatest net positive there ever was... provided we
survive global warming, that is.

So if we're going to guilt-trip people today for the actions of some
historical Westerners, we should adulate people too for the actions of some
historical Westerners. But somehow that never happens.

The West is objectively the best thing that ever happened to mankind.

~~~
ethbro
_> Entirely thanks to the West._

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_dynasty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_dynasty)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate)

Imho, the West shouldn't feel bad for the actions of historical Westerns.

But it should absolutely feel bad for the (not insignificant) portion of its
prosperity that was a result of that history.

To put it another way, say I run an illegal sweatshop in Africa, bury my
profits, leave a note to my daughter telling her where to find the money, then
die.

She doesn't get to ethically say "My dad was a terrible person and wrong"
_AND_ keep that money.

Even if she didn't know where the money came from, started a business with it,
became successful through her hard work, and only finds out later, she still
bears guilt.

You don't get to rig the game in your favor, then even things out after you've
collected winnings from crooked hands and say "Okay, everything's fair now."

~~~
dmpk2k
_> But it should absolutely feel bad for the (not insignificant) portion of
its prosperity that was a result of that history._

And it should feel _great_ for the amazing things it has done for the world as
well, as any graph of poverty and disease since the 1700s shows.

And therein lies the rub: when was the last time you heard someone thank the
West? It is likely 4 out of 5 people alive today wouldn't be if it weren't for
the West. Of the remainder, 94% would live in absolute poverty, instead of the
current 10%. They'd live at most 40 years, instead of 70+. They'd be anywhere
from 300-1200x more likely to be starving. Instead of almost everyone reaching
old age, 1/3 - 1/2 of all children would die of various causes. And so on, and
so on, and so on.

 _And so on._ The list just doesn't end. The past was hellish to the modern
eye. I wonder why!

Focussing only on the bad, and completely ignoring the good, is intellectually
dishonest and betrays a complete lack of perspective.

 _> "Okay, everything's fair now."_

Except the world would be objectively far worse off if it wasn't for those
crooked hands. See above.

~~~
ethbro
You're supposing an alternative where it was only possible for the West to
have created these inventions you allude to.

While there have been thesises that only Great Britain possessed the necessary
ingredients for steam power and industrialization, that argument isn't
universally held. And I refuse to believe that this applies to every
invention, especially as world population increased.

~~~
dmpk2k
You're right, but in the current timeframe? That's one hell of a stretch.

I'll go Bayesian on this one. And so: thanks West!

~~~
intended
Eh? If time frame was the criteria we could Just start wars again. Remove all
the people except the victors and chattel.

And there’s billions who never got a chance to ever get medicine. Billions
more never born or able to live with a fighting chance because the entire
social structure was yanked out, root and branch.

------
justboxing
> From the controversial construction of Africa’s largest dam in the rugged
> hinterland just shy of the Sudanese border, to Addis Ababa’s alleged
> displacement of tens of thousands of villagers in order to lease their prime
> Nile-side land to foreign agribusinesses, an uneasy pall hangs over the
> entire area.

Who are these "foreign agribusinesses"? Is it western corporations like
"gourmet coffee" producers and such, or something more elementary / basic like
wheat, rice, grain producers?

And who is leading the prime Nile-side land to them? The government (which
might be corrupt) or is it greedy individuals who are destroying their
ecosystem at the cost of their fellow dwellers?

> Just reporting there means navigating a complicated minefield of
> checkpoints, informants, and terrified interviewees.

Why?

~~~
mc32
If you care to look, it's by and large South Asian and East Asian "from India,
Turkey, Pakistan, China and Sudan as well as Saudi Arabia, have leased
Ethiopian land."[1]

[1][https://ig.ft.com/sites/land-rush-
investment/ethiopia/?mhq5j...](https://ig.ft.com/sites/land-rush-
investment/ethiopia/?mhq5j=e6)

~~~
justboxing
Wow. I did not know that. India and China alone account for nearly 1/2 the
world population. Don't think this leasing of land can be 'undone' any time
soon...

~~~
pm90
And yet, India and China produce all the food they need (even if India has a
horrible record of distributing that food to those who need it).

I'm not sure why the Ethiopian govt. has allowed this to happen. Smells a lot
like corruption.

~~~
Synaesthesia
There were horrible famines in India, under British rule. Ever since
independence there hasn’t been one major famine in India.

~~~
pm90
The horrible famines during British times were also caused by distribution
problems and not solely due to lack of grains/foodstuffs. Amartya Sen won the
Nobel Prize for showing that.

While its true that there hasn't been a catastrophic famine in India, it still
suffers from widespread hunger and undernourishment of its children.

------
firefoxd
Around a decade ago, chickens were infected (I don't remember with what) and
were making people sick in Cairo. So most people slaughtered them and threw
them in the nile.

The nile is also the source of Bilharziasis. The nile is where a vast number
of people throw their trash.

------
kvee
8 years ago on a felucca in the middle of the Nile in Luxor I saw a dead horse
float by

------
QAPereo
_A lot of this appears to be due to climate change, and it is happening up and
down the Nile valley._

Yes, and the ensuing political and social instability is driving mass
migration; this is an accelerating process. What will happen when tens of
millions of desperate Africans flee to Europe? The first, small, pulse of
immigration is changing the political landscape of Europe!

I really don’t know the answers to these questions, but holy shit they worry
me!

~~~
gurkendoktor
Should questions like these already influence whether/where we buy property or
whether to have children? It's hard to find anyone who's optimistic about
Europe 30-50 years into the future.

~~~
QAPereo
I honestly don’t know. I struggle with a somewhat depressive outlook, but
horrifically reality and that outlook have been slowly converging. I hope that
I’m wrong, just a cranky guy, because the alternatives are genuinely
terrifying me.

------
gumby
A side point but these BBC articles are essentially unreadable, with huge
pictures, weird scrolling that only works with a mouse (no space-for-next-
page) etc. No text-only link. Could they get a warning similar to the [video]
title amendment?

~~~
pmontra
I'm reading those stories on my Android phone with Firefox and they work very
well. I'll try them on my laptop and remember to use the space bar to scroll
(touchpad is more natural to me.)

~~~
gerdesj
It is a bit weird but (to me) works well once I got used to it. I can see what
they are trying to do and in some parts it is quite a clever form of
presentation.

On my laptop (Linux, Chromium) it works fine with a two finger scroll on the
touchpad - ie "mouse". I also tried space bar and that does work but most of
the "roller blinds" stop halfway until the next press. All the content was
readable.

To me, the mechanism does work but I'm not sure it actually improves the
medium. I really am in two minds as to whether the effort is really worth it.
The transitions and so on _do_ have an impact but I'm not sure it lends itself
to everyone's reading style.

It feels more like a presentation and less like an article, and that could be
the nagging feeling at the back of my mind. Maybe I need to read more of these
things to get a proper perspective on this form of presentation.

------
aisofteng
>"We’ve always treated the river badly, we’ve always assumed it was big
enough,” said Youssef Abugroun, an engineer and part-time fisherman, whose
regular evening sessions now net him around 10% of his catch a decade ago.
“But maybe we’re just too many for that now.”

And further down, mentions that the water is just "too filthy". Sounds like a
large part of this is due to people shitting into the river they drink from.
Makes it hard to have much sympathy.

~~~
chewz
Oh no, people shit and threw thrash in a river their neighbors down the river
drink from. Why should they worry?

