Recap of Yemen's environmental issues in 2008

In 2008, water scarcity has remained Yemen's most worrying environmental reality. Many areas in Yemen suffer a severe crisis in terms of drinking water supply, water for irrigating agricultural lands, and other vital needs. Most Yemenis have stopped drawing water from many wells, which have recently dried up.

The water crisis in Yemen understandably worries people, even children, who are the people most responsible for bringing water from springs and wells.  The water crisis in Yemen is one of the country’s most threatening disasters. It is also one of the factors causing poverty in the country, since it deprives huge numbers of Yemeni workers from practicing their main source of livelihood by working in agricultural fields.

Qat is one of those rare kinds of trees which requires huge quantities of water, causing great strain on Yemen’s water resources. The lands used for qat cultivation have expanded to include a much greater area than before. Experts have estimated that more than 60 percent of the water consumed in Yemen is used to irrigate qat crops.

While Yemen suffers from grave water shortages, specialists and officials keep on warning that the country’s water supply relies on limited groundwater. Only 125 cubic meters are available annually per capita, and the groundwater has been polluted and heavily overexploited for more than two decades, according to a German Technological Cooperation (GTZ) document.

However, Yemen is not the only country where water has become a scarce good, as most of the countries in the world share this problem as growing populations place ever-increasing demands on limited resources. Some other suffering countries have tried to protect their water resources by using some recently developed techniques, such as the “Virtual Water” concept. 

Virtual water includes the amount of water embedded in food or other products needed for its production. For example, producing one kilogram of wheat requires roughly 1000 liters of water, giving it a virtual water content of 1000 liters, according to figures released by the World Water Council (WWC). “Virtual water is the trading of water or trading of water in goods. We import stuff, the manufactured goods, and in fact we are importing the water used to create these products,” said Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim al-Hamdi, Deputy Minister of Water and Environment. 

“So, the question is: can our economy in Yemen sustain virtual water that enables us to import every drop of water we need? I think it is a very difficult for us,” Dr. al-Hamdi said. “Our economy is not very strong and neither is it our purchasing capacity, which allows us to import everything we need.”

However, for the first time in its history, Yemen is making use of the ferro-cement technique to alleviate the water crisis, which poses the biggest threat to human survival in this country. The Minister of Water and Environment, Dr. Abdul-Rahman al-Eryani, launched two ferro-cement reservoirs to harvest rainwater in two schools in Sana’a on June 18.

During 2008, efforts were made to develop effective machinery to exchange pesticides to decrease their health and environmental hazards. The Yemeni government, especially the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, adopts many different procedures to manage the exchange of pesticides and strengthen the observation of such operations.

Pesticides can wreak all sorts of havoc on human and animal health. About 17,000 Yemeni’s are diagnosed with cancer each year, said Dr. Nadeem Mohammed Saeed, director of the National Oncology Center. “It is often caused by smuggled and banned pesticides used in growing qat, vegetables and fruits,” said Dr. Saeed.

However, the Ministry confirmed that Yemen’s imports of pesticides fell to 464 tons during the first half of this year, compared to 824 tons in the same period of 2007. 

Related Content

•  Drug use in East and South-East Asia a growing problem
•  Recap of Yemen's environmental issues in 2008
•  World Aids Day celebrations call for urgent steps to deal with disease
•  Screw Worm Fly: new threat to livestock in Yemen
•  Yemen: Gateway for early humans in their journey out of Africa
•  Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise
•  Another three-toed dinosaur walked in Arhab
•  World Toilet Day
•  Fighting AIDS and misinformation remains an international concern
•  Poverty and water discussed in recent analysis