effective formulation and implementation of successive national policies and strategies for integrated water resources management (IWRM) as well as planning and management of multi-country projects. The project has also come up with Nile Basin Decision Support System (DSS) where NBI countries will be able to share data on river hydrology to better understand river system behaviour, evaluate alternative development and management schemes (World Bank, 2004b:5-6). This will facilitate knowledge integration which is important for making more informed decisions for sustainable water resource planning and management in the basin. However, this project is aiming at building a common technical foundation rather than a common local socio-cultural and environmental knowledge base or both for facilitating integrated water resource planning and management from basin wide perspective. In that regard, the project’s focus represents a biased and typical top-down approach for integrated water resource management which don’t create a levelled ground for integrated and sustainable management of the river.
3) The Socio-economic Development and Benefit Sharing Project
To address the complexity and variability of the river basin’s hydrology as well as the differences of Nile Basin countries’ economies, the social economic Development and Benefit Sharing project (SDBS) is aiming at an integrated approach to water resources management, environmental conservation and regional development (World Bank, 2004a:2). This is a fundamental building block for integrated natural recourse management since the project focuses on knowledge integration as well as economic integration for sustainable
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