The Blue Nile, located in East and North Africa is a river about which much has been written since the publication of Alan Moorehead’s The Blue Nile in 1962. Like its companion volume, The White Nile (1960), the book has been accused of presenting a biased, orientalist account of the river, its peoples, and its history; as this article argues, however, some of its themes persist and have become stronger today. Moorehead discusses the themes of war, invasion, and the encounter between Europeans (the French, British, and Ottoman Turks) and Africans (the Egyptians, Sudanese, and Ethiopians). He also addresses the question of the deep latency of Ethiopian power in the Nile basin, a theme not taken seriously in past writings. Yet, the present contains its own challenges because of the effects of humans on the Nile basin generally. The population of the basin at the time of Ethiopian emperor Tewodros was significantly smaller than the present number. In that very different world, Egypt could not only feed itself but also occasionally export food. African megafauna still roamed wild in areas of today’s Sudan and northern Ethiopia. The levels of precipitation were also higher. Concerns like global warming, climate change, and catastrophic environmental change were the stuff of either science fiction, then already past its infancy, or biblical myth. In my father’s lifetime, our hometown of Gedarif, Sudan, had elephants nearby and ostriches as well. Today, those animals are a fading memory at best. Despite challenges posed by population growth, resource depletion, and climate alteration, the states of the Nile basin are not close to cooperating with regard to their common resource, regardless of the false dawn offered by the Nile Basin Initiative, Technical Cooperation Committee for the Promotion of the Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile Basin (TECCONILE), and myriad other attempts at feigned cooperation. This article seeks to explain the reasons behind that failure, arguing that the

To reduce athlete testing time, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the Yo-Yo intermittent recovery test levels 1 (IR1) and 2 (IR2) performances, maximal sprinting speed (10, 20, and 35 m), repeated sprint ability (RSA; 7 × 35 m), and submaximal heart rates (HRs) after 2 and 4 minutes of the Yo-Yo IR tests by testing 57 high-level soccer players. All players played regularly in one of 3 highest levels of Norwegian soccer and were tested during 3 sessions on 3 consecutive days. Large correlations were observed between Yo-Yo IR1 and IR2 test performances (r = 0.753, p ≤ 0.05). Small and moderate correlations were found between 20- and 35-m sprinting speed and Yo-Yo IR1 performance (r = -0.289 and -0.321, respectively, p ≤ 0.05), whereas 35-m sprinting speed correlated moderately to Yo-Yo IR2 performance (r = -0.371, p ≤ 0.05). Repeated sprint ability at 10, 20, and 35 m all showed moderate to large correlations to Yo-Yo IR1 performance (r = -0.337 to -0.573, p ≤ 0.05). Repeated sprint ability at 20 m (r = -0.348, p ≤ 0.05) and 35 m (r = -0.552, p ≤ 0.01) correlated moderately and largely to Yo-Yo IR2 performance. In addition, moderate and large correlations were found between submaximal Yo-Yo IR1 HRs after 2 (r = -0.483, p ≤ 0.01) and 4 minutes (r = -0.655, p ≤ 0.01) and Yo-Yo IR1 performance, and 2 minutes Yo-Yo IR2 HR and Yo-Yo IR2 performance (r = -0.530, p ≤ 0.01). Intraclass correlation measures of submaximal HR after 2 and 4 minutes of Yo-Yo IR1 test and after 2 minutes of the Yo-Yo IR2 were 0.92 (coefficient of variation [CV] = 4.1%, n = 33), 0.93 (CV = 3.8%, n = 33), and 0.72 (CV = 2.9%, n = 10). Adjusted ordinary least square (OLS) regressions revealed associations (p ≤ 0.05) between sprint speed at 20 and 35 m and Yo-Yo IR1 test performance, but only between 35 m and IR2 test performance (p ≤ 0.05). Further, OLS showed that RSA at 35 m was related to both levels of the Yo-Yo IR test (p ≤ 0.01), and that submaximal HRs after 2 and 4 minutes were independently associated with Yo-Yo IR1 and IR2 performances (p ≤ 0.01). In conclusion, Yo-Yo IR1 and 2 test performances, as well as sprint and RSA performances, correlated very largely, and it may therefore be considered using only one of the Yo-Yo tests and a RSA test, in a general soccer-specific field test protocol. The submaximal HR measures during Yo-Yo tests are reproducible and may be used for frequent, time-efficient, and nonexhaustive testing of intermittent exercise capacity of high-level soccer players.

International water management has lately received increased attention in both scholarly and political circles. Whereas the traditional focus when investigating water issues was on water conflicts, the attention has shifted toward examining more cooperative aspects of shared water relationships. River cooperation is frequently equated with river treaties but cooperation in river basins is much more than that. This article investigates the effect a signed water treaty has on later water-specific cooperation in a dyad. An analysis is conducted for all international river basins in the world for the period 1948-1999. Using data on international rivers, river treaties, and cooperative water events, the results show that river treaties indeed are successful in promoting water cooperation.

Neomalthusians have regularly predicted "water wars" while cornucopians have argued that there is no inherent water scarcity and liberal institutionalists have seen cooperation as a more likely outcome of competition for limited water resources than violent conflict. Three earlier studies have found a positive statistical relationship between shared rivers and low-level interstate conflict. Based on a more comprehensive dataset, an improved model of conflict, and a more appropriate control for geographical opportunity, we argue that these results are spurious and that we cannot establish a conflict-inducing effect of shared rivers over and beyond contiguity itself. In fact, the new dataset presented here makes it clear that nearly all neighbors in the international system share at least one river. This calls for a different approach to investigating interaction in shared river basins. This notwithstanding, freshwater and other shared resources may still provide a mechanism to explain why contiguity is robustly associated with conflict, so the water-conflict scenario cannot be dismissed. Indeed, our results show that among river-sharing states, basins with an upstream/downstream configuration increase the risk of conflict. The article finally discusses how river interaction should be further investigated based on these results and what new data are needed to enable such research.

Conflict appears more often between neighboring states. Adjacency generates interaction opportunities and arguably more willingness to fight. We revisit the nature of the border issue and measure geographical features likely to affect states’ interaction opportunities as well as their willingness to fight. We do so for all on-shore borders from the period 1946–2001. Although each border is unique, a general result shows that the longer the border between two states, the more likely they are to engage in low-intensity conflict. This is particularly so for conflicts active during the Cold War and located in highly populated border regions.

Rising demand for water in water-scarce areas has led to frequent predictions of looming “water wars,” although evidence suggests that water is also an important source of cooperation. This paper follows up on recent research suggesting that river disagreements are more likely to lead to both militarized conflict and peaceful negotiations when water demands and water scarcity are greatest, but that river treaties have generally prevented militarization while increasing negotiations. Here, we examine the effectiveness of these negotiations, in order to determine whether factors that promote negotiation onset have different effects on negotiation outcomes. Empirical analysis suggests that negotiations are most likely to succeed when they concern rivers with high value for the negotiating states (with many uses offering the possibility of negotiating tradeoffs), when they concern a current rather than future problem, and when the adversaries share closer overall relations, but less likely when water scarcity is more acute and when they involve a cross-border river with a stronger upstream state.

As global water scarcity increases, both scholars and leaders have suggested that water will be a leading cause of future armed conflict. Yet other scholars argue that states typically cooperate rather than fight to manage their shared water resources. We address these arguments by examining the management of internationally shared rivers in the Americas, Western Europe, and the Middle East from 1900–2001. We propose hypotheses on the factors that lead states to become involved in disagreements over shared rivers as well as the factors that lead them to negotiate over these disagreements. Heckman probit analysis suggests that water scarcity – found by past work to be an important influence on armed conflict over rivers – is also an important influence on peaceful efforts to settle river problems; river claims are more likely where water supply is lower and demand is greater, but negotiations are also generally more likely in these same situations. Furthermore, while the existence of river treaties does not prevent the emergence of river claims, the presence of at least one treaty over the specific subject of the claim provides an important starting point that greatly increases the likelihood of negotiations over such claims. We conclude that the more pessimistic views of water management are missing an important part of the story. States are much more likely to negotiate in the most dangerous situations, and institutionalization of river resources can make an important contribution to negotiations over any disagreements that do emerge.

As global demand for water increases but usable freshwater resources decrease, many have suggested that water scarcity is and will be an important source of armed conflict -- but little systematic research has investigated this topic. We examine the management of all shared rivers in the Americas, Western Europe, and the Middle East, seeking to understand both the outbreak of explicit disagreements over the use of rivers ("river claims") and the militarization of these claims. We argue that increasing water scarcity and water demands make states more likely to begin river claims and to begin militarized conflict over these claims, but that treaties can help to prevent both the emergence and militarization of river claims. Empirical analysis with rare events logit models indicates that greater levels of water scarcity and greater demands on water increase the risk of both claim onset and militarization, while river treaties have mixed effects on claim onset but significantly reduce militarization. We conclude by discussing implications for future research in this area.