The Water Crisis in Yemen

Drawing on the analysis of Parts I to III, this final chapter summarizes Yemen’s water dilemmas and the options available. The chapter looks first at Yemen’s three major water problems (section 12.1). The following section (12.2) looks at ways that Yemen might tackle resource depletion and mitigate the related risks of decline of the rural economy. The problems of finding enough water to supply Yemen’s rapidly growing towns and of improving rural and urban water supply and sanitation services are the subject of sections 12.3 and 12.4. The discussion ends (section 12.5) with a brisk summary of choices: in water resources, ‘surrender control to gain ownership’; in agriculture, ‘more income per drop’ – sustainably; in sourcing water for settlements, equitable institutional mechanisms; in rural water, efficiency, quality and sustainability; and in urban water, expanded service provision, a business approach, and a pro-poor focus.

The book closes with a ‘last word’: all Yemenis have to work together to mitigate the impacts of inevitable water scarcity. In this, the imperatives are: community-based water management; efficient and sustainable agriculture: equitable inter-sectoral transfer; pro-poor public programmes; and structural shifts to a less-water intensive economy.

Beginning in 2011, Yemen lived through turbulent times. The Yemeni people, their institutions and their economy took a battering. Now, a new consensus is emerging to reunite the nation – one hopes, around more stable and inclusive institutions. The question for the water sector is: as things settle down, what agenda is on the table?

Mismanagement of its very limited water resources has led Yemen into a water crisis of a unique nature

As this book has extensively discussed,¹ Yemen has gone into serious overdraft, drawing on fossil reserves laid down millennia ago, much of which will be used up within a generation or so from now, particularly in the more densely populated areas. The consequences of this draining of water resources will be a shrivelling of the rural economy, spiralling costs, and heightened social and economic risks. So what are the options that will allow Yemenis to avoid such a nightmarish scenario?² The challenge is sharpened by the uniqueness of Yemen – no easy models lie readily to hand³ – and by poverty, which also limits solutions.⁴ Even where solutions are available, Yemen lacks the economic weight to apply them swiftly.

Modernization has been extraordinarily rapid – my first visit to Sana’a in 1974 was really like entering the Middle Ages, and Yemenis since then have been dashing to join the modern world. The results, however, are patchy and weakly entrenched. Yemen’s governance ‘scores’ are among the lowest in the world.⁵ The effectiveness of government is low. Laws are hard to implement and enforce. Public investment is low-yielding. Public institutions generally have limited influence over events on the ground. Traditional systems of accountability have been eroded but their modern counterparts are frail.

Further constraining solutions is the complicated political economy of the country

Patterns of patronage have bound together coalitions of tribal, military and commercial interests that are now unravelling and regrouping, with uncertain impact on determining policies for the longer term benefit of the Yemeni people.

Only the Yemeni people, through collective action, can solve their water problems

From this web of constraints, one thing stands out: where no easy solutions exist, where the government can influence outcomes in only limited ways, and where the centre is controlled by particular rather than national interests, it will be up to the Yemeni people, town by town, village by village, wadi by wadi, to devise their own solutions to their local problems, and to put them into practice. It will be the job of the centre to support these local solutions.

The reader of Parts II and III of this book will be well aware of Yemen’s morass of water problems, but these problems are dominated by a trio of really tough ‘three pipe problems’.⁶ If solutions to these three problems could be found, the rest could follow. First, groundwater is running out and as a result the rural economy is in extreme peril. The groundwater boom of the past three decades is over, water resources are rapidly depleting, and exhaustion of the resource is threatening agriculture and the households that depend on it, and even threatening the small quantities of water needed for the survival of rural communities. Second, there is fierce competition between town and country for the water that urban settlements need for their survival. Most cities in the highlands are desperately short of water, and where they can find it, they simply appropriate it, with consequent negative impacts on rural people and resulting tensions and conflicts. Third, the quality of water and sanitation services provided to both rural and urban residents is low. Only 44 per cent of the population have access to network water supplies (compared to more than 90 per cent for the Arab region as a whole), and almost nowhere in Yemen is there 24/7 service. Only 14 per cent of Yemeni rural households have access to improved sanitation, against a regional average of 76 per cent.⁷ The following sections (12.2–12.4) summarize these problems and highlight possible areas for action.

12.2 Tackling resource depletion and mitigating risks of impoverishment of the rural economy

One conclusion of this book has been that Yemen has put in place the nominal framework for good practice water resources management, but that there has been very little impact on water user behaviour.⁸ Why? Six lessons can be drawn from recent history.

First, in the Yemeni context, and whatever the Water Law or parliament or the ministry may say, it is local people, not the government, who have control over the water resource, particularly the groundwater resource. Attempts at planning, allocation and regulation have been made, but there has been virtually no discernible result in terms of water saved. Initiatives in planning and regulation from the top down have not affected incentives on the ground. In Yemen, local people and not the government control water – in particular, groundwater is in the control of the owner-operators of the 100,000 or more tubewells.

Second, raising the price of water by diesel price hikes may have saved a little, but it has proved a blunt instrument with negative knock-on effects, particularly on the poor. For a long time, policy people, including myself, intoned the litany that pricing the resource more dearly would lead to more efficient use and to less use of water overall. Successive diesel price rises have probably had this effect, although there is only anecdotal evidence so far. This has also led to a reduction in household incomes, particularly for the poor, not only directly in agriculture by putting up the cost of water and reducing the demand for wage labour, but also indirectly by pushing up the cost of energy and hence of transport and consumer goods. We have saved sixpence, yes – but at what cost!⁹

Third, programmes to increase irrigation efficiency have reduced water losses but have saved little water overall. Programmes have improved irrigation efficiencies and irrigation water management and crop husbandry. These programmes have reduced losses between the well-head and the plant roots and have increased overall water use efficiency.¹⁰ Farmers have also reduced water use and increased their incomes. There is scant evidence, however, that has reduced overall water consumption on any particular farm or indeed from any particular micro-catchment.¹¹

Fourth, subsidies in Yemen flow to the more influential and are a blunt and inequitable instrument for affecting water user behaviour. The objective of public water policy is not just to save water for sustainability, but to improve the livelihoods of rural people with a focus on the poor. Yet the evidence is that subsidized programmes in Yemen experience considerable leakage, particularly subsidies to irrigation efficiency, as ownership of wells is skewed towards the better-off, and therefore the subsidies go predominantly to the better-off.

Fifth, programmes which address water conservation at the farm level neglect the fact that water flows: water that is saved in one place may be pumped out by a neighbour – or further ‘downstream’, or appropriated by a thirsty city. There is a classic asymmetry here between costs and benefits: why should an individual save water if he or she derives no future benefit from it? Essentially, this is the converse of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ that has led to the groundwater crisis in the first place. An individual who appropriates a share of the common groundwater resource has every incentive to pump out as much as possible as fast as possible, lest his neighbour take it. And conversely, no one individual has an incentive to conserve that water as the benefit may go elsewhere.¹²

Finally, and positively, there are many examples of pragmatic water management and of conservation based on local cooperation. Chapter 11 gives examples of local water users agreeing on and applying a wide range of rules and practices – well spacing, bans on water sales, prioritization of drinking water needs, supply enhancement through recharge, improvement of agricultural value added. Some of these experiences have involved communities linking up with projects and public authorities – but on the community’s own terms. Yemen’s local communities possess social capital that already regulates land and water, resolves disputes and organizes collective action, and this social capital has considerable adaptive capacity to respond to the new challenges of contemporary water resources management.

So what are the policy conclusions to be drawn from these lessons? There are five.

First, the problem is a local problem and therefore it is local people who have the incentives to fix it. Local – and location-specific – solutions are needed.

Second, common pool resources require commonly agreed and implemented rules if they are not to be subject to individual overuse. Stakeholders have to agree together on a framework of rules, regulation and incentives.

Third, outside intervention alone cannot effect the right changes, but it can be a useful complement to local action, through knowledge about the resource and management techniques, through support to the building of local institutions and capacity, through information about how to obtain ‘more income per drop’, and so on. Partnerships – particularly for knowledge – with outside agencies can help, but only if local people are in the driving seat.

Fourth, successful action on water resources management is possible at the local community level, but this is rather remote from the basin scale of planning and management envisaged by the current IWRM approach. Problems and solutions are best identified at the local catchment or sub-basin level, where community cooperation is possible, and where benefits of conservation or recharge can be directly felt. Basin-level planning is important, but it needs to be linked to community- and district-level activity (see Box 12.1).

Finally, rural poverty has risen and will only get worse as the water resources situation deteriorates. Therefore, approaches to address the water conservation need in agriculture also have to ensure ‘more income per drop’, and to ensure that interventions specifically prioritize the needs of the poor.

This section draws lessons from experience on how water might be transferred fairly from agriculture to urban uses.

Box 12.1: Lessons of SBWMP: support community water governance.¹³

The end of project post-evaluation for SBWMP had similar findings and lessons to those set out in this chapter: (1) top-down licensing has failed; (2) well drilling is best controlled by local stakeholders, calling on government when needed; (3) basin-level planning has to be matched with community- and district-level actions; (4) users associate in many ways and Yemen should ‘let many flowers bloom’, not force all local water management into standardized WUAs; (5) ‘commons can be managed’ by local institutions, provided they are supported – or at least not undermined by government, and provided that the incentive structure ensures that those who cooperate are better off than those who do not; and (6) water governance should not neglect the social capital that is a strength of Yemeni culture.

The evaluation report then recommends a strategy for supporting community water governance. This is based on the recognition that the only route to more effective and sustainable water governance is likely to lie through the development of local self-regulation, at the scale of villages and districts, but that local self-regulation can be supported by technical advice and with enforcement of regulations consistent with rules that have been agreed to by communities of stakeholders.

The report recommends five steps as key elements of a strategy:

• Convening. Bringing people together and facilitating local assessment and problem-solving in communities and districts.

• Informing. Providing customized technical advice and training to help local people better understand their aquifers and catchments, and how management may be improved.

• Empowering. Ensuring that local water governance has the authority to make and enforce rules that apply to all water users, through suitable processes at multiple scales, within communities of water users sharing streams and aquifers, and within districts.

• Enforcing. Responding to local requests to prohibit drilling of wells that could harm other users and to prevent other unwise use of water resources.

• Funding. Investing in aquifer recharge, water use efficiency, ‘more income per drop’ or in diversification of livelihoods beyond irrigated agriculture.

As in countries all across the Arab region,¹⁴ agriculture dominates water use in Yemen, but as water becomes scarcer and demand from other uses increases, it has become clear that water is ‘over-allocated’, and transfer to other uses is imperative. However, the history of rural–urban competition for water, told in Parts II and III, shows that in the absence of good water governance the law of capture prevails. Towns have simply taken water from source areas and aquifers, and even where a legal basis has been established – for example, in the protection zones around Sana’a – this has not prevented other users from drilling and extracting water. Even within towns like Sana’a, illegal wells proliferate. At the same time, rural people have seen what they assumed to be their water rights annulled by the unilateral actions of urban utilities, and where attempts at reaching agreement and compensation have been undertaken, these have rarely had good or stable outcomes.¹⁵ Overall, the pattern is of competitive pumping between town and country with no institutional mechanism for assigning rights, for compensating losses, or for allowing stakeholders to articulate their problems and get them fairly adjudicated.

Strategy needs to be based on the three principles of equity, sustainability and ‘no uncompensated harm’

In 2011, the government convened a national conference on water which addressed, among other challenges, that of ensuring supply to settlements. The resulting 2011 Sana’a Declaration¹⁶ draws on lessons of experience to propose basic principles:

• Sustainability, i.e. solutions should respect the long-term conservation of the resource.

• ‘No uncompensated harm’, i.e. changes in effective rights should be compensated.

The declaration proposes some reasonable supply- and demand-side measures. Supply-side measures include dams, rooftop rainwater harvesting and leaching pits. On the demand side, the mechanisms mentioned are urban planning and measures for moderating urban demand, both technical (e.g., efficient shower heads, plugs in the sink, etc.) and incentive based (e.g., pricing).

It will, however, be necessary to transfer water from agriculture to supply water to settlements

Clearly these proposals are in the right direction, but they skirt the main issue. Increasing supply and managing demand in the ways indicated are good ideas, although hard to apply in the Yemeni context where there is so little water that supply augmentation can provide only modest increments, and demand is already rationed at very low levels by supply shortages. The basic answer to the key question of how adequate affordable and stable supplies can be assured for urban areas in the context of extreme water scarcity and of a very poor economy is – by transfer from agriculture.

There are several options for a fair ‘win–win’ transfer of water from countryside to town

So what mechanism can achieve this transfer ‘equitably, sustainably and with no uncompensated harm’? Supposing for a moment that accountable water management was in place – as, for example, there was promise of in the Sana’a basin¹⁷ – the basin committee could have overseen fair and transparent deals under which town and country defined water rights together, assigned the deeper aquifer to drinking water use, and reserved ‘green belt’ areas for farming and environmental protection. It is also possible that direct transfers from farming communities to urban uses could be compensated.¹⁸ In areas like the Sana’a basin, much of the institutional framework for such transfers exists, or could exist: a basin committee; an active NWRA branch; a well-managed utility concerned to find equitable and sustainable solutions to chronic water shortages; concerned local authorities; and water user associations of varying status and representativity (some with capacity, some embryonic). Plainly the next step is to progress from vision to action. Water shortages are a burning issue for Sana’a, and the national capital area would be a good place to start.

This section looks at Yemen’s third big water problem, examining progress against the existing rural and urban water strategies.

Access to safe water and sanitation, together with improved hygiene, may be the best way to improve the standard of living and the prospects in life of Yemen’s scattered and poor rural communities. The story of the past decade, told in Chapter 7, is one of recovery from a poor situation. At the end of the 1990s, barely one-quarter of rural Yemenis had access to safe water. There was no agreement on how best to bring improvements, the main sector agency was in disarray and public stakeholders, civil society and donors were at odds with one another.

…expansion of rural water supply and sanitation networks appears to be successfully following an agreed strategic approach

Resources have been allocated to move Yemen rapidly to much higher rates of coverage, which have indeed increased considerably – perhaps to more than 40 per cent for water supply.¹⁹ There is a sector strategy on which stakeholders are largely aligned. A community-based demand responsive model has been tested which gives community associations choice but also responsibility in investment and operation of locally run water supply schemes. Several agencies are delivering investments relatively efficiently and speedily, with prospects for service quality and sustainability at moderate per capita costs (Box 12.2). The government’s rural water agency, GARWSP, has been overhauled. The Yemeni SFD has successfully innovated low-cost and sustainable supply from water harvesting. CBOs have shown how grassroots initiatives can create strong sustainable institutions and combat elite capture. NGOs have introduced alternative technologies and supported community mobilization and health education. Surveys report a fair degree of consumer satisfaction, although with reservations on sustainability and cost.²⁰ Some associated improvements in education and health can be detected.²¹ Local governments are now sufficiently happy with results that they are beginning to allocate funding for rural water schemes from their own resources.²²

Despite this, half the population still lacks access to safe water, and outreach and efficiency of delivery could be improved

Today, despite these gains of the past decade, more than half the rural population still lacks access to safe water – and three-quarters does not have safe sanitation. Although agencies are generally aligned on the demand-responsive approach, there is still limited cooperation among agencies, and no joint programming. There have been improvements in GARWSP’s project cycle, but it remains complex and long, with projects taking up to six years to complete. Community ownership has increased, but the competition among communities inherent in the demand-responsive approach can marginalize the most needy – the poorest, the most remote, and the most water-scarce communities. In fact, access by the poor is limited by cost-sharing requirements, remoteness and lack of clout. Within agencies, incentives are largely to meet targets with bigger schemes and to let large contracts, not to seek out poor, faraway settlements. GARWSP is reluctant to tap the energies of CBOs and NGOs, perhaps because the big government agency has a standard implementation model into which NGOs do not fit, and also because GARWSP – and the Ministry of Finance – are unwilling to share finance with non-state actors.

The palette of technologies has remained limited by lack of capacity in agencies and by preference for engineering-based and procurement-intensive pumped schemes, based on sometimes unsustainable groundwater sources.

Box 12.2: Good practice delivery of rural water and sanitation.²³

Over an eight-year period 2001–10, the World Bank-financed RWSSP delivered 242 schemes to serve 620,000 people at an average investment cost of $70 per capita. At the end of the project, more than 80 per cent of the schemes were covering their costs and user satisfaction was high. An estimated 400,000 people received hygiene and sanitation training during the project.

Some schemes – nobody knows how many – have failed when the water runs out. GARWSP has adopted ‘social mobilization’ and community capacity building only half-heartedly, and women’s role in project selection and management remains limited. Sanitation and health education are generally neglected in favour of meeting engineering and financial targets.

Financing is available for the next phase, which should improve performance based on the lessons learned

For the coming years, adequate financing for the sector agencies seems assured.²⁴ After the pause in implementation in 2011, and the deterioration in services during that troubled period, the essential aim will be to consolidate the gains made in recent years and to resume expansion of coverage affordably and sustainably. Areas where further progress is needed include:

• Completing the reform of public agencies, notably by completing the decentralization of GARWSP.

• Continuing progress towards alignment and coordination among agencies, especially moving towards joint programming at the local level, together with local councils and the basin committee, within the framework of the basin plan.

• Increasing the pro-poor emphasis by sharpening targeting and ensuring affordable and sustainable technical solutions for the poorest communities.

• Increasing the range of technologies offered and adapting solutions to both local water resource availability and to community social and financial capacity.

• Developing a reliable M&E system that can create confidence among stakeholders and demonstrate actual progress, sustainability and value for money to the Yemeni people.

In 1997, faced with dire performance, Yemen embarked on a complete restructuring of its urban water and sanitation services. Chapter 8 told how, under a ten-year programme, municipal utilities were to be corporatized, investment was to increase coverage and service performance, and a business approach to management, including private sector participation, would lead to financial autonomy.

Today, 15 years on, results have been slow to arrive. Services and viability have improved in some municipalities – generally in smaller towns with new networks and with access to adequate water resources. In the bigger towns, particularly in the very water-scarce highlands, progress has been more limited. At the end of an eight-year $130 million programme (2003–10) supporting implementation of the reform agenda and improvement in service delivery in four cities – Sana’a, Hodeida, Ta’iz and Mukalla – the World Bank concluded that water supply actually declined during project implementation, affected by the depletion of groundwater, which was the principal water source in all four cities. The project exceeded its target for new house connections (72,000 against a planned 60,000) but water sold per connection, which was targeted to increase by 20 per cent, in fact fell by 5–10 per cent in all four cities.

The situation of the utilities at the end of the World Bank-financed project in 2010 was held to be ‘unsustainable’. The financial performance of the local corporations in all four cities deteriorated during the period.²⁵ This poor financial picture was no doubt one of the reasons that led three international companies to shy away from engaging in a lease contract in Yemen (see Box 8.7 in section 8.4.5).

The poor revenue performance is linked not just to service delivery inefficiencies and low tariffs and collection performance, but also to low levels of water consumption. The post-evaluation report at the end of the World Bank-financed project²⁶ says: ‘household surveys suggest that the number of people per connection is very high, and hence average per capita water consumption is in some towns no more than 30 litres per person per day.’ Under circumstances of extreme shortage, expanding networks brings little benefit to the population and increased losses to the utilities.

The case of highly water short settlements, particularly the large highland cities of Sana’a, Ta’iz and Ibb, which are all growing fast, plainly requires not just institutional solutions but also resolution of the water sourcing problem along the lines described in section 12.3 above.

In Chapter 8, three mandates of the urban water sector were set out: affordable service provision and expansion; a business approach; and meeting the water needs of the poor. The argument ran that meeting all three together would be challenging, particularly in the Yemeni context. In the event, meeting any of these three mandates is proving uphill work. Often, the utilities appear to be running just in order to stand still.

Despite the constraints, there are options to expand and improve services affordably

Nonetheless, while acknowledging that the challenges were really steep, Chapter 8 maintained that a number of solutions is available to deliver affordable service expansion and provision. Low-cost and innovative technologies – like rooftop rainwater harvesting and decentralized small-bore sanitation systems – can help, and even if participation of the international private sector may be a pipe dream for now, partnerships with the local private sector have potential. Several innovative service delivery models are being tested, including local area licensing and concessions, and OBA to small local private or NGO contractors.²⁷ Efficiency improvements, although difficult in the operating environment, are possible and they can help improve both financial viability and service levels.

There are also options to improve management as well as technical and financial performance

Similarly, the business approach of the utilities can be improved by the development and implementation of comprehensive business plans and the progressive adoption of the suite of management and human resource development tools that are available. Clearly, improving management will require sustained external support for institutional development and capacity building. Financial management and autonomy also need to be strengthened in order to move towards financial viability. This will require increases in tariff levels, and government at central and local levels should not shy away from this. Piped water supply in Yemen’s towns remains very cheap, and is heavily subsidized by a nation that can ill afford it. The main beneficiaries of the subsidy are the better-off.

The utilities – as public bodies – have a social obligation to ensure the water needs of the poor in their service area, and each utility should develop a pro-poor strategy. This clearly should include provision for pro-poor tariffs. The step tariff system now in place should be revised so that only the genuinely poor benefit from subsidized water. Chapter 8 (section 8.8) maintained that the most pro-poor strategy is to increase network connections, as the poor depend largely on very pricey tanker water. However, the experience in the four cities discussed above is also instructive – that expanding the network when water resources are so constrained may lead to less water for all.

Local solutions are needed, and the utilities should be encouraged to think laterally, to link up with the local private sector, and develop low-cost solutions which deliver piped water to poorer households without great strain on the utilities or on the public purse. Innovative ideas could be based on the examples of partnership with the local private sector in Ibb; of output-based aid at Wadi Dahr; and of alternative ways to increase access in Sana’a.²⁸

It is essential to continue on the reform path – but flexibly – with an eye to innovation and a focus on the poor

Clearly there will be no easy or rapid solution. The message has to be to continue along the path set out in 1997 – but also, where the conditions for efficient utility performance are simply not in place, to envisage alternative models. The final evaluation of the recent World Bank project says laconically:

The question arises whether the current business model of providing relatively high levels of piped water service to a relatively small group of customers that require significant government subsidies and that essentially benefit richer households is the best way to provide water supply and sanitation services.

A good question – to which part of the answer is to look for other, more efficient business models, and part is to channel the subsidy to those who need it: Yemen’s poor.

Progress will be step by step. A long-term commitment from government and donors will be essential. Much of the future may in fact lie in innovative technologies like rooftop rainwater harvesting²⁹ and in new business models like local area concessions and OBA.

Margaret Thatcher refused to read any paper longer than two pages. So what would two pages on water, addressed to the new Yemeni government, say? Following the structure of the chapter, this section looks in turn at water resources management; at water and agriculture; at sourcing water for towns; and at rural water supply.

Here the basic message is that government should ‘surrender control to gain ownership’. Local people – the real water managers of Yemen – should be encouraged and empowered to get on with the job, with public agencies and institutions in support. The government should help the child to reach the apple, as Erasmus says, not pluck it for him. This would mean that the government should:

• Mainstream the community-based water resources management approach and the partnership role of government and public agencies.

• Continue decentralization to basin level, empowering basin committees and NWRA branches to press on with preparation, validation, ownership and implementation of basin plans.

• Use the national budget and donor support as a mechanism for integrating water programmes at the basin level.

• Support by all means possible community management of water resources and water use efficiency.

Yemen has been pursuing a sustainable agenda to improve the efficiency and sustainability of water management in agriculture. The new government should essentially, do more of what has already been started, and do it better, supporting farmers in vigorous implementation nationwide of five linked approaches:³⁰

• More ‘income per drop’ (Figure 12.1) through more efficient groundwater irrigation and greater use of groundwater for supplementary irrigation, combined with support for community-based water resources management.³¹

• Investment in infrastructure and improved water use efficiency of surface irrigation, especially spate, with attention to equity of water allocation, again combined with support for community-based water resources management.³²

• A focus on the poor and on adding value to the production systems of the poor, particularly by more intensive use of traditional agricultural and water harvesting techniques, and a more productive livestock economy.³³

• Adapting farming practices: changing cropping patterns, growing shorter-cycle drought-tolerant or later maturing varieties, changing the cropping calendar, etc.³⁴

Figure 12.1 More efficient water use could maintain rural incomes and expand production of high-value crops (Samsarat al-Zabib, the ancient raisin market in the old city of Sana’a). Photograph courtesy of Peer Gatter.

• Adoption of integrated management of the water resource at all levels from the bottom up.³⁵

The problems of highland towns in sourcing water are growing fast, and the government needs to confirm a clear set of approaches to ensure solutions that are fair to all citizens, both in source areas and in urban areas:

• Work with communities to establish water rights, and work from the existing community institutional basis, strengthening it where needed, to transfer water from agriculture or to reserve certain resources for future high-value uses.

Innovations have been successfully introduced and expansion of coverage seems to be going well. What is needed is attention to efficiency, quality and sustainability. The new government should:

• Ensure that the positive experience with the DRA and ‘demand-responsive approach’ and with efficient project delivery is sustained.

• Improve efficiency through decentralization and joint planning at the local level.

Yemen has been pursuing a reform programme in urban water for almost 15 years, and this has led to palpable improvements. However, the local corporations are still far from financial viability, and coverage and service quality are lagging behind the rapid growth of the urban population. Meanwhile, the poorest pay the highest charges for water. The new government should:

• Press on with the sector reform agenda, pursuing the goals of affordable service provision and a business approach.

• Keep the pro-poor agenda constantly in view and ensure that any implicit or explicit subsidy goes to help the poor and not the better-off.

• Be flexible and responsive to local conditions, especially encouraging innovative, low-cost technologies and new business models and partnerships that can expand access and improve service delivery sustainably and affordably.

Writing about the water challenges of Yemen in 1997, I talked of building on the nation’s traditions and commonsense to brake the runaway mining of the past three decades and to return resource management towards the age-old balance reflected in that luminous hadith:

Cultivate your world as if you would live forever Prepare for the hereafter as if you would die tomorrow

This final section of the book looks, therefore, beyond the firefighting of the coming year or two, at some issues that will affect the peace, prosperity and happiness of the Yemeni people in the longer term.

Natural resource problems are slow to manifest themselves – and even slower to find solutions

Often enough, the problem is one of resource depletion – living off natural capital – and the resource is exhausted before solutions begin to bite. A rough arc is sometimes suggested, lasting 30 years, from first signs of trouble to final resolution – or final exhaustion of the resource. Does this apply in Yemen’s water sector?³⁶

Faint early signs of the groundwater depletion problem were by and large ignored

The rapid development of groundwater began in the 1970s, and within a very few years the first signs of trouble were emerging. Daniel Varisco documented the drying up of the springs of Ahjur and of 100 long-disappeared named springs in the Sana’a basin. Martha Mundy minutely documented the shift from springs to groundwater in Wadi Dahr as the drilling of wells dried up the old ‘bountiful resource’. At first this was greeted more with nostalgia than with alarm. It was sad that the old picnic spot frequented by Sana’anis at the top of Hadda village was gone, and the ‘soft animals’ that used to live on the green slopes disappeared, but farmers were busy exploiting the new, seemingly endless resource of groundwater, a freshwater ocean beneath their land that only required you to open the tap. Access to this year-round source not only allowed production of all kinds of high-value crops: it also freed farmers from the burden of having to cooperate with their testy neighbours.

By the early 1990s, the experts were ringing the alarm bells. The High Water Council published a report suggesting that Sana’a would run dry within a decade. Farmers everywhere were deepening their wells and it was getting expensive. The General Department of Hydrogeology published the Water Resources Assessment of Yemen, signalling the pervasive problems of depletion of a finite resource.

Technicians started to alert the politicians, and to suggest solutions. In 1996, the government set up the NWRA to practise integrated management of the resource. In 1997, the World Bank published its farsighted Yemen: Towards a Water Strategy, which accurately diagnosed the whole water problem and traced out a coherent set of measures with which to respond.³⁷ A series of projects in the 1990s and 2000s addressed the problems of water use efficiency in irrigation as well as supply-side options to enhance the available resource. The government embarked on a programme to build small dams to increase groundwater recharge. In 2003, the Water Law introduced water rights and regulation to control development and extraction. In 2004, the NWSSIP came along, with comprehensive measures and investments. During the decade, basin committees were set up and basin plans were formulated, regulation was introduced, and projects continued to increase water use efficiency. In 2011, the National Water Conference recognized the leading role of community-based local water management, with public agencies in a supporting role, as the primary solution.

It has taken 30 years for the nation to align on a strategic approach – but implementation is slow and results are not yet apparent

It is perhaps three decades since those springs first dried up in al-Ahjur, and to date it is hard to say that the problem has been solved. In fact it is hard to point to much real improvement on the ground, and much has got worse. But the problem has been identified, acknowledged and – to a large extent – dimensioned; the institutional and technical solutions are known; and there is agreement at the technical level on how to proceed.

All that remains is political determination, persistence, adequate allocation of technical resources, and financial backing. Now is the time to move to effective action on a broad scale before the resource runs out. As the psychologists say: you know what to do, so do it!

Ideally, future population growth should take place where reliable and low-cost water sources are available

Hitherto, Yemeni cities have grown in a rather unplanned way, and water sourcing and supply and sanitation have had to follow. The consequences are clear: a mismatch between where the people are – largely in the highlands – and where the water is – largely elsewhere. Proposals have long been made to reverse the sequence, and to locate people on the coast. Alternatively, there have been ideas of long distance water transfer, but these face enormous social challenges of reconciling the population in either the source or in the transit area – and also very high costs, a multiple of what people are paying at present in towns. If the new Yemen can develop long-term planning capability, the location of population growth poles close to available sources of lower cost water should be a priority.

Perhaps the most extraordinary phenomenon with which government has to wrestle is qat, which occupies a huge place in Yemeni economy, society – and imagination. It is a frightful time waster, but also a wonderful leisure activity and an aid both to social intercourse and to Yemeni amour propre. It brings in a large daily flow of revenue to rural areas, keeping much of the rural economy alive and sustaining parts of the precious heritage of terraces.

Figure 12.2 A 13-year-old qat seller (left) with a customer of about the same age, in the Shumayla market. According to the World Health Organization, around 15–20 per cent of Yemeni children under the age of 12 chew qat. Photograph courtesy of Peer Gatter.

Despite this, qat gets a hugely bad press, particularly from foreigners, who emphasize its sheer uselessness and want not to consider it in GDP, and even to eliminate its use and production. Yet qat is the mildest of drugs, considered by the World Health Organization as far less harmful than tobacco or alcohol. In terms of harmless uselessness it is comparable to tea or coffee, similar social catalysts and mild stimulants.

Supply-side measures could help improve water productivity while promoting alternatives…

Policy clearly has to be practical. Elimination, or even substantial reduction, would be politically and socially impossible – and a catastrophe for the rural economy. In the Yemeni context, the best approach is to help farmers improve the water productivity of qat production while working on the development of alternative value chains (like coffee!). The idea of freeing up qat imports would also help realign prices with comparative advantage, but the practicality of that has to be considered – there was a bad experience in the 1970s.³⁸ Also, the effects in alternative producing countries – particularly Ethiopia – need to be considered, so that the problem is not simply ‘exported’.

… and this could be matched with education and public awareness to reduce demand

On the consumption side, long-term education and public awareness campaigns could help reduce demand, as they have done for tobacco in other countries. Leadership on the issue is vital, and perhaps the new government will provide this.

Yemen is far from self-sufficient in cereals but has no comparative advantage in producing them…

Yemen produces only a quarter of its cereals needs. The average rural household has only land enough to produce food for two to three months of household consumption, so that the vast majority of rural Yemenis, and all urban Yemenis, are dependent on efficient food markets and on generating enough household cash income to buy the food that the family needs. Could – and should – Yemen produce more basic food, particularly cereals? In fact, Yemen has no particular comparative advantage in cereal production. As an arid country short of water Yemen’s comparative advantage lies in producing crops that pay the highest return to the scarcest factor (water). These crops are essentially high-value cash crops like fruits and vegetables, particularly those that can be grown under controlled irrigation and greenhouse protection. And, of course, qat.

… so food policy correctly emphasizes boosting household incomes rather than household food self-sufficiency

In these circumstances, food security policy should focus on boosting household incomes through the production of the crops that yield the highest returns to water, and on developing alternative on-farm sources of income (particularly livestock and agricultural labour) and alternative off-farm income generating activities. Whether by design or default, these approaches have driven government food policy for the past three decades. Agricultural development policy has correctly focussed on higher value irrigated production, and on increasing value added in rainfed and livestock through moving to higher productivity packages. There has been no encouragement to revert to low-value cereals production.

In view of the low level of domestic cereals production, government has tried to ensure the availability of affordable basic food based on cheap imported cereals and on efficient market distribution. In the past, Yemen had access to cheap or even free imports – for example, US food aid. This preponderance of cereals imports and the government’s control over food aid also simplified the management of cereals subsidies. Thus, the government pursued an effective ‘virtual water’ strategy that benefitted rural incomes by encouraging the production of crops with the highest returns to water, while importing the basic foodstuffs with lower ‘virtual water’ content.

… but increasing levels of commercial imports and world price rises have delivered shocks and contributed to deterioration in macro-level food security…

Today, Yemen remains very reliant on food imports, with imports in 2010 accounting for 73 per cent of cereal consumption. This high dependence, combined with world price volatility, has left the country highly vulnerable to external shocks. The global food crisis of 2007–8 led to steep rises in the cost of food and placed stress on the balance of payments. With the average Yemeni only 300 calories above hunger level, domestic price rises pushed many more Yemenis into food insecurity. In 2000, Yemen used 10 per cent of its export earnings to import food; by 2007 it was using 25 per cent, representing a significant deterioration in its macro-level food security.

…and this has been reflected in deteriorating food security at household level

The rise in the price of food and the decline in much of the rural economy have left Yemen one of the ten most food insecure countries in the world. About 32 per cent of Yemenis – some 7.5 million people – do not have enough food. Of these, the vast majority live in rural areas – 6.4 million people, 37 per cent of the total rural population. Food insecurity deteriorated further during the 2011 events, with more than 10 million people (44 per cent of the population) estimated to be food insecure at the end of 2011. About 60 per cent of very young Yemeni children are stunted. Severe (life-threatening) stunting affects one-third of all children in the country. The problem of stunting is also predominantly rural, affecting two children out of three in rural areas. The poor mountain agriculture areas of the highlands are a particular problem, with two-thirds of all Yemen’s food insecure living in dry highland areas.

Clearly, water for agricultural production has to play a major role in correcting this desperate situation. The whole agenda outlined throughout this book and summarized in this chapter should increase efficiency of water use in agriculture – both irrigated and rainfed – and so boost household incomes, thereby improving household food security. At the same time, the government has to ensure the importation and distribution of adequate food throughout the country. But promoting production of cereals when higher value alternatives are viable would simply pauperize the rural population further and lead to more hunger.

The government and all Yemenis have to work together to mitigate the impacts of inevitable scarcity and to effect structural change to a less water-dependent economy

There is no ‘solution’ to Yemen’s water crisis: demand will continue to far exceed supply and the depletion of natural capital will oblige difficult adjustments. Managing the transition to extreme scarcity and avoiding conflict at the local level will be an obligation of all Yemenis. But it will also be the responsibility of the government to work on mitigating the underlying causes of scarcity as far as possible and to plan for the structural transition of the economy in the longer term.

Community water management, ‘more income per drop’, equitable inter-sectoral transfers, pro-poor public programmes, and progress towards a less water-intensive economy are the imperatives

First, the government has to pay attention to the risks of resource depletion and the pauperization of the rural economy. In particular, empowerment of community institutions can help local people find their own solutions, and an increase in the efficiency of all water use is essential to produce ‘more income per drop’.

Second, the government needs to set fair rules for inter-sectoral transfer of water, in place of the present ad hoc and arbitrary transfer systems. This will require the development of equitable markets or other fair transfer mechanisms.

Third, safe water and sanitation for all is a key poverty reduction measure, and the government has to ensure that subsidies go to promote services for the poor.

Finally, the government has to plan for a less water-intensive economy, including measures to ease the inter-sectoral movement of labour, and the creation of an environment that is friendly to alternative economic activities.