Water shortages threaten Yemen

Sana'a: Gentle showers temporarily damp the dust and cool the August heat of Sana'a, but cannot remedy a grim water outlook for the Yemeni capital's two million inhabitants.

Some residents receive piped city water only once every nine days and others get none at all. The sinking water table means the municipality can now operate only 80 of its 180 wells, said Naji Abu Hatim, a Yemeni expert at the World Bank.

"People don't believe the magnitude of the problem. They see a little cloud and say, 'Oh, God is still there, he can give us water'," he added.

"But water is Yemen's number one problem."

That might seem a startling claim given that the country is also grappling with a tribal revolt in the north, violent unrest in the south, Al Qaida militancy and widespread poverty.

However, water shortages in the southern city of Aden are already fuelling violence. One person was shot dead and three were wounded, two of them police officers, during water protests on August 24.

And fast-depleting aquifers make Yemen's plight the starkest in a desperately water-scarce region. Local disputes over water rights may turn violent, especially in tribal areas. Competition for supplies between cities and the countryside may sharpen.

"Yemen's water share per capita is under 100 cubic metres a year, compared to the water poverty line of 1,000 cubic metres," said Hosni Khordagui, Cairo-based head of the UN Development Programme's water governance programme in Arab countries.

Arab states, except Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon, all fall short of the water poverty line and the regional trend is towards consistently lower rainfall.

Unlike wealthy Gulf oil states, Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, is ill-placed to fill the gap between supply and demand with desalination.

"They are thinking of it, but economically I very much doubt they can do it," Khordagui said.

Desalinating seawater and pumping it 2,000 metres uphill to the inland capital would be hugely expensive.

Water could be transferred to Sana'a from another basin, but this could spark conflict with nearby provinces that are also parched.

Sana'a, 50 years ago a sleepy, walled town of perhaps 50,000, is among the world's fastest-growing cities, with a population exploding at an estimated eight per cent a year, according to the World Bank, of which five per cent is due to rural migration.

Water scarcity is forcing many poorer villagers to sell up and move to Yemen's cities, where few have the skills to thrive, even though they are expected to send money home to relatives.

From the 1970s, Yemenis turned swiftly from rain-fed farming to irrigation using water pumped from new tube wells, encouraged by the government and foreign donors keen to expand production.

"Finally they found irrigated agriculture was unsustainable because of the depletion of groundwater," Abu Hatim said.

Agriculture sucks up more than 90 per cent of water used.

Mismanagement of water resources is one reason why Yemen's plight is worse than that of neighbours such as Oman, argues Jac van der Gun, director of the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre in The Netherlands.

Both countries have dwindling oil resources, but Oman's oil wealth is shared among only three million, compared to Yemen's population of 23 million, which is set to double in 20 years.

"Oman is a positive example of stability and charismatic leadership, so it is much easier for them to control their water problems. Yemen is not anarchic, but it comes close," he said.

Van der Gun cited the troubled northern province of Sa'ada, the bastion of Shiite tribesmen whose intermittent rebellion against the government flared into fierce battles this month.