Abstract
The governance of international river basins relies on the principle of integrated water resources management, which assures water sustainability for economic gains. However, in the Nile River Basin, oil extraction from Lake Elbert in Uganda and its transfer via pipelines along Lake Victoria as part of ‘the East African Crude Oil Pipeline’ project contradict the concept of shared basin and its integrated management. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to explain how this project affects the Nile Basin from an ecological perspective in international relations, where ecology nor state interest is the core of analysis besides the interlinking of local and transboundary scales. It is apparent that oil extraction and transport threaten directly the Nile Basin in terms of water pollution and depletion of biodiversity and indirectly by severely affecting the livelihoods of local communities, which impedes ecological justice in the Nile Basin.