Poverty and water discussed in recent analysis

Yemen is a poor country, and most of its citizens are either poor or very poor. Water problems are an important component of poverty. To asses this issue, a workshop entitled Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) of Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Reforms was recently convened.

There is a significant disparity in terms of access to water between well-off and poor Yemenis, both in terms of access to safe water and sanitation, and the price paid. The vulnerability of poorer people is greater, and the share of their income directed to getting useable water is higher.

In agriculture, ownership of a water source is correlated with higher income, and the development of groundwater resources in recent years has contributed to growing income disparities as the better-off have been able to capture the lion’s share of the resource.

The health consequences for the Yemeni population are severe: for instance, mortality of children under the age of 5 years is twice that of other countries in the Middle East and the North Africa region, and half of these deaths are due to diarrhea. The gender and educational enrolment impacts are also considerable, with women and girls spending large parts of each day fetching water.

PSIA is the analysis of the distributional impacts of policy reforms on the well-being or welfare of different stakeholder groups, with a particular focus on the poor and vulnerable. PSIA also examines vested interests to assess and address the political economy of reform, issues of sustainability and risks of policy reform.

Around 90 participants attended the workshop held October 28. It was conducted by the Technical Secretariat (TS)/ Reform of the Institutional Framework in the Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Sector in cooperation with the Yemeni-German Technical Cooperation Water Sector Program and the World Bank.  

Yemen has no permanent rivers and is dependent on rainfall, floodwater diversion and groundwater extraction as its water sources. Over 90 percent of water is used in agriculture, and the rapid development of irrigation in recent years has led to over-extraction of groundwater and a rapid fall of aquifer levels in many areas.

Yemen has set up a complex structure of institutions to manage the water sector. However, despite the impressive array of public agencies, it is private agriculture which has almost complete control over water resources. At present, irrigated agriculture is depleting the resource, with negative impacts on equity, sustainability and availability of water for transfer to domestic and industrial use.

Among other analyses, the study builds on the Yemen Country Water Resource Assistance Strategy (CWRAS, World Bank 2005a) and the Country Social Analysis (CSA, World Bank 2006a).

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