As Yemen struggles to defeat Al Qa’ida, end a tribal uprising in the north and prevent the south from seceding, water could turn out to be the lubricant that tips the country over the edge. Without radical reform of agricultural and other policies, the Yemeni capital Sana’a stands in a decade at most to become modern history’s first capital to run out of water, according to a recent projection by the World Bank-funded Sana Water Basin Management Project. Rapidly dwindling water resources are likely to lead to disputes and reignite riots against a government already widely viewed as corrupt, nepotistic and incompetent.
One of the world’s water poorest nations, Yemen is consuming its limited water resources at a far faster rate than it is able to replenish them. At Yemen’s current seven percent population growth rate, consumption can only increase. Yemen’s population is set to almost double from 23 to 40 million over the next two decades.
Alongside unemployment, water is driving increased internal migration and urbanization.
Some 70 percent of Sana’a’s population either buy their water from private vendors or collect free water from local mosques. Vendors sell a liter of water for $0.15, a steep price in a country where incomes average $2 a day. The vendors draw their water from wells near the capital and deliver it in tanker trucks or jerry cans. With no enforced standard for potable water, quality varies.
Water extraction rates in Sanaa are believed to outstrip replenishment by a factor of four. Sana’a’s water basin is close to collapse. So is the basin in Amran, 50 kilometers north of Sana’a. Of the 180 wells tapped a decade ago by Sana’a’s municipal water company, only 80 remain active. In some districts of the capital, taps have shut down. In others, supply is interrupted at least once a month.
In 2008, the Eurasia Group reported that 19 of Yemen’s 21 aquifers were not being replenished and that in some cases nonrenewable fossil water was being extracted. Wells in several parts of the country have run dry. The falling water table means wells have to be dug deeper at levels of 200 meters and more where the water is contaminated.
Alongside rising domestic consumption, Yemen’s water crisis is fueled by corruption, poor or no resource management and wasteful irrigation. Agriculture consumes most of Yemen’s water. Qat, whose leaves are consumed as a daily stimulant by the vast majority of Yemeni men, is Yemen’s foremost agricultural product. The more water the plant gets, the more productive is, making water conservation a non-starter.
Alongside rising domestic consumption, Yemen’s water crisis is fueled by corruption, poor or no resource management and wasteful irrigation. Agriculture consumes most of Yemen’s water. Qat, whose leaves are consumed as a daily stimulant by the vast majority of Yemeni men, is Yemen’s foremost agricultural product. The more water the plant gets, the more productive is, making water conservation a non-starter.
Yemen’s lack of resource management is evident from the fact that the government created a separate ministry for water and environment only in 2004. Six years later, the country still suffers from lack of effective regulation and oversight, particularly with regard to groundwater. As a result, digging of wells remains uncontrolled and so does extraction of groundwater. Water Minister Abdul Rahman Fadhl Iryani, unable to enforce licensing of new wells, estimates that 99% of water drilling in Yemen is unlicensed. Moreover, Yemen does not regulate the import of drill rigs, which are not subject to custom duties or taxation. Yemen is estimated to have some 800 privately owned drill rigs, a number far higher than most other countries.
Subsidized diesel powers landowners’ water pumps. Yemen has so far resisted donor demands that it abolish diesel subsidies ever since rioters fearing price hikes and higher inflation in 2005 forced the government to drop efforts to do so. Abolishment of subsidies would also cut into profits from diesel smuggling being raked in by the country’s elite.
The water crisis plays into the hands of Al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the AQAP offshoot that claimed responsibility for the failed Christmas day bombing of a USA airliner. To compensate for its lack of control in large parts of the country, the government has delegated responsibility for water to local authorities, establishing water companies primarily in urban areas. It is in those areas like Marib and Shabwa where no such companies were created that AQAP is particularly strong.
From charlie:
ReplyDeleteExcellent.
To add, desalination as is done in Saudi and the Gulf is not possible due to investment cost and the logistics of pumping it from the coast up into the mountains where urban populations are based.
Also, Yemen could conserve up to 50% if they installed extensive PVC pipe system for irrigation instead of the open ditch irrigation systems currently used for agriculture. This is the ONLY positive action that govt and private water companies could take that would increase practical volumes of water supply. Then the crisis reaches an end point in terms of supply limits.
Nobody has any realistic solutions for the longer term besides radical conservation and current system efficiency efforts such as PVC to reduce evaporation and seepage losses.
That includes any opposition or alternatives to current failed government.
Our efforts to craft a solution should focus on a national unity government under new leadership that declares a cease fire in the North and a Jirga sort of outreach to leaders of the South and East to bring them into the new government and focus more power on the regionally elected members of Parliament, where regional voices can be heard and expressed and undercuts the complaints of imposition of authority from Ali Abdullah Saleh's family and tribe.
Under the concept that barking dogs do not bite until they stop barking. Rebellions are caused by the sense of external imposed oppression and disenfranchisement. Step one is slow the sense of exclusion.
Washington is bereft of viable actions to stop the slide into chaos, as most Aid funds disappear into a black hole of regime corruption. So how do you help someone who will effectively not act to help himself?
US is going to defer on such concerns, and try to focus on short term security and al-Qaida elemination efforts. They are also going to see how much of the economic and social programs they can push onto Saudi and GCC plates.
Regionalizing the rescue effort is the only way to engage Yemen rescue without Americanizing it to an extent the Yemenis reject the US presence.
Watch for US efforts to expand engagement of Regional entities, from Islamic Development Bank to World Bank to Arab League and most of all GCC.