More than half of Yemen’s scarce water is used to feed an addiction.

Even as drought kills off Yemen crops, farmers in villages like this one are turning increasingly to a thirsty plant called qat, the leaves of which are chewed every day by most Yemeni men (and some women) for their mild narcotic effect. The farmers have little choice: qat is the only way to make a profit.

Meanwhile, the water wells are running dry, and deep, ominous cracks have begun opening in the parched earth, some of them hundreds of yards long.

“They tell us it’s because the water table is sinking so fast,” said Muhammad Hamoud Amer, a worn-looking farmer who has lost two-thirds of his peach trees to drought in the past two years. “Every year we have to drill deeper and deeper to get water.”

Across Yemen, the underground water sources that sustain 24 million people are running out, and some areas could be depleted in just a few years. It is a crisis that threatens the very survival of this arid, overpopulated country, and one that could prove deadlier than the better known resurgence of Al Qaeda here.

Water scarcity afflicts much of the Middle East, but Yemen’s poverty and lawlessness make the problem more serious and harder to address, experts say. The government now supplies water once every 45 days in some urban areas, and in much of the country there is no public water supply at all. Meanwhile, the market price of water has quadrupled in the past four years, pushing more and more people to drill illegally into rapidly receding aquifers.

“It is a collapse with social, economic and environmental aspects,” said Abdul Rahman al-Eryani, Yemen’s minister of water and environment. “We are reaching a point where we don’t even know if the interventions we are proposing will save the situation.”

Making matters far worse is the proliferation of qat trees, which have replaced other crops across much of the country, taking up a vast and growing share of water, according to studies by the World Bank. The government has struggled to limit drilling by qat farmers, but to no effect. The state has little authority outside the capital, Sana.

Already, the lack of water is fueling tribal conflicts and insurgencies, Mr. Eryani said. Those conflicts, including a widening armed rebellion in the north and a violent separatist movement in the south, in turn make it more difficult to address the water crisis in an organized way. Many parts of the country are too dangerous for government engineers or hydrologists to venture into.

Climate change is deepening the problem, making seasonal rains less reliable and driving up average temperatures in some areas, said Jochen Renger, a water resources specialist with the German government’s technical assistance arm, who has been advising the water ministry for five years.

Unlike some other arid countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Yemen lacks the money to invest heavily in desalination plants. Even wastewater treatment has proved difficult in Yemen. The plants have been managed poorly, and some clerics have declared the reuse of wastewater to be a violation of Islamic principles.

At the root of the water crisis — as with so many of the ills affecting the Middle East — is rapid population growth, experts say. The number of Yemenis has quadrupled in the last half century, and is expected to triple again in the next 40 years, to about 60 million.

In rural areas, people can often be seen gathering drinking water from cloudy, stagnant cisterns where animals drink. Even in parts of Sana, the poor cluster to gather runoff from privately owned local wells as their wealthier neighbors pay the equivalent of $10 for a 3,000 liter-truckload of water.

“At least 1,000 people depend on this well,” said Hassan Yahya al-Khayari, 38, as he stood watching water pour from a black rubber tube into a tanker truck near his home in Sana. “But the number of people is rising, and the water is growing less and less.”

For millenniums, Yemen preserved traditions of careful water use. Farmers depended mostly on rainwater collection and shallow wells. In some areas they built dams, including the great Marib dam in northern Yemen, which lasted for more than 1,000 years until it collapsed in the sixth century A.D.

But traditional agriculture began to fall apart in the 1960s after Yemen was flooded with cheap foreign grain, which put many farmers out of business. Qat began replacing food crops, and in the late 1960s, motorized drills began to proliferate, allowing farmers and villagers to pump water from underground aquifers much faster than it could be replaced through natural processes. The number of drills has only grown since they were outlawed in 2002.

Despite the destructive effects of qat, the Yemeni government supports it, through diesel subsidies, loans and customs exemptions, Mr. Eryani said. It is illegal to import qat, and powerful growers known here as the “qat mafia” have threatened to shoot down any planes bringing in cheaper qat from abroad.

Still, the water crisis could be eased substantially through a return to rainwater collection and better management, Mr. Renger said. Between 20 and 30 percent of Yemen’s water is lost through waste, he said, compared with 7 to 9 percent in Europe.

In Jahiliya and other areas around the capital, the World Bank is leading a project to change wasteful irrigation patterns.

Mr. Amer, the farmer based here, proudly showed visitors his efforts to irrigate fruit and tomato fields using rubber tubes, instead of just funneling it through earthen ditches that allow most of the water to evaporate unused. Little hoses spray the crops with water instead of wastefully soaking them.

But he also pointed out two local wells where the water is dropping at the astonishing rate of almost 60 feet a year, causing the land to subside. Nearby, sinkholes in the arid soil of his property are growing longer and deeper every year.

“We have been suffering for years from this,” he said, gesturing at a cast-off drill rig that broke after going down too deep into the earth.

The Yemeni engineers working on the World Bank project concede they have had tremendous difficulty convincing other farmers — and even government agencies — to take their efforts seriously.

“There is no coordination with other parts of the government, even after we explain the dangers,” said Ali Hassan Awad. “Prosecutors don’t understand that drilling is a serious problem.”

Mr. Eryani, the water minister, takes the long view. Yemen has suffered ecological crises before and survived. The collapse of the Marib dam, for instance, led to a famine that pushed vast numbers of people to migrate abroad, and their descendants are now scattered across the Middle East.

“But that was before national borders were established,” Mr. Eryani added. “If we face a similar catastrophe now, who will allow us to move?”

Source: Robert F. Worth, New York Times, 01 Nov 2009

In a new report [1], Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies. Israeli authorities said the report “distorts the truth” and that it reflected Palestinian propaganda.

These unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there.

“Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and the OPT.

In their new report [1], Amnesty International revealed the extent to which Israel’s discriminatory water policies and practices are denying Palestinians their right to access to water. Uzi Landau, Israel’s minister of national infrastructure, called the report “a lie” and said it reflected Palestinian propaganda. “Despite Israel’s severe water crisis, Israel transfers large quantities of water, greater than it is obliged to according to the [Oslo] agreement.”

Israel uses more than 80 per cent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the OPT, while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20 per cent.

The Mountain Aquifer is the only source for water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but only one of several for Israel, which also takes for itself all the water available from the Jordan River.

While Palestinian daily water consumption barely reaches 70 litres a day per person, Israeli daily consumption is more than 300 litres per day, four times as much.

In some rural communities Palestinians survive on barely 20 litres per day, the minimum amount recommended for domestic use in emergency situations.

Some 180,000-200,000 Palestinians living in rural communities have no access to running water and the Israeli army often prevents them from even collecting rainwater.

In contrast, Israeli settlers, who live in the West Bank in violation of international law, have intensive-irrigation farms, lush gardens and swimming pools.

[...] In the Gaza Strip, 90 to 95 per cent of the water from its only water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Yet, Israel does not allow the transfer of water from the Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank to Gaza.

[...] To cope with water shortages and lack of network supplies many Palestinians have to purchase water, of often dubious quality, from mobile water tankers at a much higher price.

[...] Israel has appropriated large areas of the water-rich Palestinian land it occupies and barred Palestinians from accessing them. It has also imposed a complex system of permits which the Palestinians must obtain from the Israeli army and other authorities in order to carry out water-related projects in the OPT. Applications for such permits are often rejected or subject to long delays.

Vegetable crops and irrigation network being uprooted by an Israeli army bulldozer in Jiftlik, Jordan Valley, 11 March 2008. Photo: Amnesty International

[...] In rural areas, Palestinian villagers are continuously struggling to find enough water for their basic needs, as the Israeli army often destroys their rainwater harvesting cisterns and confiscates their water tankers.

[...] In some Palestinian villages, because their access to water has been so severely restricted, farmers are unable to cultivate the land, or even to grow small amounts of food for their personal consumption or for animal fodder, and have thus been forced to reduce the size of their herds.

“Israel must end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians’ access to water, and take responsibility for addressing the problems it created by allowing Palestinians a fair share of the shared water resources,” said Donatella Rovera.

In a separate feature “The day the bulldozers came…“  read how Israeli army bulldozers destroyed rainwater cisterns, that were built in 2006 as part of a European Union-funded project, in the village of Beit Ula, north-west of Hebron.

Israeli reaction to Amnesty Report

The Israel Water authority said the report “distorts the truth” and that Israel “holds up its end of the Oslo agreement regarding water sharing”.

Uzi Landau, Israel’s minister of national infrastructure, called the report “a lie” and said it reflected Palestinian propaganda. “Despite Israel’s severe water crisis, Israel transfers large quantities of water, greater than it is obliged to according to the [Oslo] agreement.”

A different perspective: a Palestinian and Israeli mayor are building a water bridge

Canadian-Israeli enviro journalist Karin Kloosterman has a more positive story to tell. One where the Mayor of Gaza is co-operating with one from a nearby Israeli city, so Gaza City can build its own water treatment facility. An international meeting in Brazil in July 2009 was lined up so the two could meet, Hams refused to let the Mayor of Gaza from leaving the Strip.

Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem did attend the event, however, and they signed their names on the water works plan, without the consent of Hamas officials.

Expected to cost more than $50 million, the plant will be modelled on the eight-year old water treatment facility in Ashkelon. Gaza will receive the blueprints and Israeli specialists.

Read the full story

[1] Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories: Demand Dignity: Troubled waters – Palestinians denied fair access to water. Download PDF

Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories: Thirsting for justice: Palestinian access to water restricted (Demand Dignity campaign digest). Download PDF

Video: Troubled Waters: Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water

Source: Amnesty International, 27 Oct 2009 ; IRIN, 27 Oct 2009 ; Karin Kloosterman, Huffington Post, 29 Oct 2009

Not war but drought has forced more than 100,000 people in northern Iraq to abandon their homes since 2005, with 36,000 more on the verge of leaving, says UNESCO.

The four-year drought and excessive well pumping have led to the collapse of an ancient system of underground aqueducts, or karez.

Only 116 of 683 karez systems are operational, according to a titled Survey of Infiltration Karez in Northern Iraq: History and Current Status of Underground Aqueducts. The study says 70 per cent of active karez have dried up. It is the first to research the effects of the droughts on the system of underground aqueducts, concludes that “swift and urgent action is needed to prevent further population displacement”. UNESCO said it considers the plight of the karez system and the migration as an early warning sign for the future of water in the area.

The study provides the Iraqi government with its first inventory of karez, UNESCO said, 84 per cent of which are located in Sulaymaniyah and 13 per cent in Erbil province. A karez can produce enough drinking water for 8640 people and 1440 households, UNESCO said. The technology was developed in ancient Persia.

“Before the onset of the drought, the greatest threats to the karez in Iraq were political turmoil, abandonment and neglect,” a UNESCO statement said. “Today, few people in Iraq know how to maintain or repair them, contributing to their state of disrepair.”

Entire communities have fled because of the lack of water, with populations declining nearly 70 per cent, UNESCO said. It cited as an example the village of Jafaron, where 44 of its 52 karez have gone dry since 2008. The lack of water has left barren 113 hectares of irrigated land.

UNESCO said it has been working with Iraq since 2007 to rehabilitate the karez system. In 2010, it will launch the Karez Initiative for Community Revitalisation, to help Iraqis rebuild the aqueducts.

Source: AAP / Yahoo! 7News, 14 Oct 2009

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will extend up to $600 million in loans to Azerbaijan for water and sanitation improvements in towns that have suffered from decades of neglect and underinvestment in infrastructure.

The Board of Directors today approved a multitranche financing facility that will release loans periodically to support the Government of Azerbaijan’s Water Supply and Sanitation Investment Program. The Government has earmarked up to $200 million for the 8-year investment program, with ADB financing up to $600 million from its ordinary capital resources. In the first tranche, ADB will provide a $75 million loan.

Azerbaijan’s water and sanitation system is over 50 years old, and has fallen into decline following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the country’s independence in 1991. Services in many secondary towns are bad, with poor piped water quality, broken or clogged sewage pipes, and wastewater discharged directly into waterways. Water purchased from private vendors to augment supply is expensive, imposing a burden on the poor.

The investment program will improve the quality and coverage of water and sanitation for about 500,000 people in secondary towns and semi-urban areas outside the capital Baku. The multitranche financing facility establishes the foundation for an 8-year partnership between ADB and the government. The first tranche funds will reconstruct and build water and sewage infrastructure, expand the planning, technical and financial management capabilities of oversight agencies, and set up project management offices in the towns of Goychay and Nakhchivan. Subsequent tranches will carry out similar activities in other towns.

Introducing water meters will in turn improve the financial viability of the service providers and support conservation.

The Government of Azerbaijan is providing $25 million. The Azersu Joint Stock Company will act as the executing agency for all project activities except those in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, where the State Amelioration and Water Management Agency will be the executing agency.

Source: ADB, 23 Sep 2009

TheArabWaterChannel – www.thearabwaterchannel.tv – is a new theme site presenting videos (ten at present) on water issues in the 22 countries that make up the Arab World.

It was set up by the Arab Water Council in partnership with TheWaterChannel, which hosts the site, and with the support of From the Source, an interactive multimedia platform for water issues in the Middle East.

The government has completed the construction of a new water system in Al-Baradah village, after contaminated drinking water had led to an outbreak of typhoid.

At the same time, a committee formed by the public prosecutor, cleared the contractor of the pipes of charges of polluting the water in the old water system. A committee statement explained that it is “practically impossible for the contractor to pump sewage water inside the pipes.”

It added that if that were the case, the central water pipe as well as the water pipes in all the surrounding villages would have also been contaminated.

The report further indicated that the contamination could have resulted from connecting the water pipes to an old water network, without purifying the water, adding that it could have also been the result of illegal house connections.

In related news, the prosecution office ordered the detainment of some officials in Al-Baradah village for four days pending investigations. The detainees include chairman of Al-Baradah’s local council Ibrahim Abdel Moemen, Salah Eddin Al-Seman, in charge of the village’s resources, Sayed Madbouly and Salam Al-Sayed, in charge of the village’s water pipes.

When typhoid erupted, Adly Hussein, governor of Qaliubiya, accused the contractor of polluting the drinking water in the pipes. Around 311 people in Al-Baradah were infected with typhoid two months before, but all have recovered since.

Source: Yasmine Saleh / Daily News Egypt, 09 Sep 2009

A water rights battle over the historic Tigris and Euphrates rivers simmered on [03 September 2009] as Iraq and Syria appealed for increased water flows to cope with severe drought but Turkey said it was already too overstretched.

Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said Turkey’s southeast region was also suffering from low rainfall and drought but the country was still releasing more water than it was legally obligated to its neighbors out of humanitarian concerns.

He said Turkey was releasing on average 517 cubic meters per second instead of the required 500 cubic meters per second, sacrificing its own energy needs in the process.

Turkey is advocating using water more efficiently and sustainably through joint projects instead of increasing water flows.

The meeting was called to discuss setting up joint stations to measure water volume at the rivers, as well as exchanging more information about climate and drought and creating joint education programs for more sustainable water management.

Drought-stricken Iraq has accused its upstream neighbors Turkey and Syria of taking too much from the rivers and their tributaries. The rivers’ low water flows are caused in part by the construction of dams in Turkey and Syria.

Turkey’s Environment Minister Veysel Eroglu said in opening remarks that Turkey was sacrificing energy production to release water from dams and alleviate water shortages downstream.

Nader al-Bunni, Syria’s irrigation minister, said his country was also letting more water flow into Iraq than required by agreements.

“We understand Iraq’s need for more water and we are letting 69 percent of the waters in the Euphrates for the bretheren people of Iraq. We have increased the amount from 58 percent to 69 percent,” he said.

Source: Todays Zaman, 03 Sep 2009

Some residents [in the Yemeni capital Sanaa (pop. 2 million)] 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. [In February 2009, the World Bank approved a US$ 90 million grant for the Water Sector Support Project for Yemen, which is being co-funded by Germany and The Netherlands].

Boys fill up their a jerry cans with water from a public tap in Sanaa August 27, 2009. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah (Yemen Environment Society)

“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 Qaeda militancy and widespread poverty.

But 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, during water protests on Aug. 24 [2009].

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 Hosny Khordagui, Cairo-based head of the U.N. Development Programme’s water governance programme in Arab countries.

[...] 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. [...] Desalinating seawater and pumping it 2,000 metres uphill to the inland capital would be hugely expensive. Water could be transferred to Sanaa from another basin, but this might spark conflict with nearby provinces that are also parched.

[...] 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 percent of water used and a third of that goes to irrigate fields of qat, a mild narcotic intrinsic to the daily social life of most Yemenis. 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.

[Y]emen’s northern highlands have been suffering a two-year drought. “The rains this year have been poor and late,” said Ramon Scoble, a water expert for the German development agency GTZ who works in Amran province, just north of the capital.

[...] The government, backed by foreign donors, began applying a comprehensive strategy for water resources, irrigation, water supply, the environment and capacity building in 2005. But experts describe implementation as patchy. The World Bank’s Abu Hatim said the programme was a palliative measure.
“It will not solve the problems, only alleviate them to buy time. The catastrophe is coming, but we don’t know when.”

Source: Alistair Lyon, Reuters, 30 Aug 2009:

A water shortage described as the most critical since the earliest days of Iraq’s civilisation is threatening to leave up to 2 million people in the south of the country without electricity and almost as many without drinking water.

An already meagre supply of electricity to Iraq’s fourth-largest city of Nasiriyah has fallen by 50% during the last three weeks because of the rapidly falling levels of the Euphrates river, which has only two of four power-generating turbines left working.

[...] Down river, where the Euphrates spills out into the Shatt al-Arab waterway at the north-eastern corner of the Persian Gulf, the lack of fresh water has raised salinity levels so high that two towns, of about 3,000 people, on the northern edge of Basra have this week evacuated. “We can no longer drink this water,” said one local woman from the village of al-Fal. “Our animals are all dead and many people here are diseased.”

Iraqi officials have been attempting to grapple with the magnitude of the crisis for months, which, like much else in this fractured society, has many causes, both man-made and natural.

Two winters of significantly lower than normal rainfalls – half the annual average last year and one-third the year before – have followed six years of crippling instability, in which industry barely functioned and agriculture struggled to meet half of subsistence needs.

[...] During the last five chaotic years, many new dams and reservoirs have been built in Turkey, Syria and Iran, which share the Euphrates and its small tributaries. The effect has been to starve the Euphrates of its lifeblood, which throughout the ages has guaranteed bountiful water, even during drought. At the same time, irrigators have tried tilling marginal land in an attempt for quick yields and in all cases the projects have been abandoned.

“Not even during Saddam’s time did we face the prospect of something so grave,” said Nasiriyah’s governor, Qusey al-Ebadi. Just east of the city, the Marsh Arabs are also on the edge of a crisis – unprecedented even during the three decades of reprisals they faced under the former dictator.

“The current level of the Euphrates cannot feed the small tributaries that give water to the marshlands,” he continued. “The people there have started to dig wells for their own survival. There is no water to use for washing, because it is stagnant and contaminated. Many of the animals have contracted disease and died and people with animals are leaving their areas.”

Nowhere is Iraq’s water shortage more stark than in what used to be the marshlands. [...] The Euphrates, once broad and endlessly green [...] has now dropped more than 1.5m.

[...] Further up the river Sheikh Amar Hameed, 44, from Abart village said: “We have lost the soul of our lives with the vanishing water. We have lost everything. We are buying drinking water now. The government must find a solution. The young will all become thieves. They have no prospects.”

Iraq’s water minister, Dr Abdul Latif Rashid, this week estimated that up to 300,000 marshland residents are on the move, many of them newly uprooted and heading for nearby towns and cities that can do little to support them.

The Marsh Arabs are semi-nomadic and large numbers have remained displaced since Saddam drained the marshes in 1991.

[...] Officials have tried to compensate by digging wells and bores, especially in the ravaged provinces of the south and in Anbar, west of Baghdad. Delegations have also travelled to Turkey and Syria, where they were warmly received, but have achieved few changes. “We were expecting much more of a release from Turkey,” Iraq’s water minister Dr Abdul Latif Rashid said. “Iran has been less receptive. We have had no response from them at all.”

Source: Martin Chulov, Guardian, 26 Aug 2009

After World Bank issues report, commissioned by the Palestinian Authority on the condition of water accessibility in the West Bank, Israel claims the reports authors are biased. To understand the conditions on the ground, how they’ve been addressed, and whether the so-called peace process succeeded in addressing them, The Real News speaks to LifeSource Project, a non-profit organization focusing solely on the issue of water. Susan Koppelman and Taysir Arabasi tell The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky the Mountain Aquifer, the biggest supply of fresh underground water is pumped by Israel even though it lies almost entirely in the West Bank. They also speak about restrictions on Palestinians to dig water wells, and their dependence on the Israeli national water corporation, Mekorot.

View the Real News video report below.

Source: Real News, 24 Aug 2009