Hydropolitics and the Nile

Anthropology major Kevin Boueri ’12  returned home to Lebanon this summer to study Arabic and do research for his honors project on hydro-politics and the Nile.  He presented an early slice of this work  at the Sudan Studies Association Conference at Ohio State University.

Kevin explains his project:

“Much of the scholarship regarding South Sudan’s future deals with oil reserves, possible violence between the north and south, and how to split the national debt.

“So far, little research has been done on South Sudan’s most vital resource: the Nile. The reason behind this discrepancy in scholarship is due to the complexity of studying South Sudan through the lens of the Nile.

“Scholars must access multiple disciplines and look beyond South Sudan as a nation-state, and instead look at the Nile Basin region as a whole. This method of studying South Sudan allows scholars to draw new conclusions about the new nation’s future.

“I discussed at the conference some of the hydrological possibilities in South Sudan’s future, such as the completion of the long-stalled Jonglei canal, which holds negative implications for the local Nuer and Dinka populations.”