A perfect storm: the causes and consequences of severe water scarcity, institutional breakdown and conflict in Yemen

Abstract

Yemen faces a dire water availability crisis, with groundwater being extracted at four times the rate of natural recharge and the capital, Sana’a, at risk of running out of water altogether. Yemen’s capacity to adapt to water scarcity has been undermined by misrule, weak institutions and patronage-driven politics that have eroded traditional tribal mechanisms of water governance and conflict management without leaving a viable alternative in their place. Using material gleaned from interviews with water specialists, this article investigates the forces impeding water reform and the mechanisms mediating the relationship between water scarcity, institutional dysfunction and violent conflict in Yemen.

Keywords:

• water scarcity
• Middle East
• Yemen
• internal conflict
• groundwater management

Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Miroslav Nincic and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments and suggestions. I am also grateful for the support received from the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore, where I carried out the bulk of the research for this article as a post-doctoral research fellow in 2011–2012.

Notes

1. Several months prior to the publication of this article, the Houthi movement broke out of its traditional strongholds in the north and made a rapid military advance south, culminating in its takeover of the capital Sana’a in September 2014 and weakening the authority of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Since then, Houthi fighters have swung further south and appear poised to take control of other Yemeni provinces. Al-Qaeda and other Sunni militant opponents have sought to overturn the Houthis’ military and political gains with suicide bomb attacks against Houthi gatherings. Hence, the Houthis’ authority is contested on many fronts and the situation remains fluid, but for the time being, they have become the dominant political force in the country.

2. To underscore the enduring and deeply ingrained aversion to any government-imposed restriction on unlicensed well drilling and groundwater abstraction in remote tribal areas of Yemen, Mohammed al-Eryani (interview, July 2011) told me a common joke which features a Yemeni citizen applying for asylum in the United States. When asked to justify his application, the Yemeni responds that he has fled his homeland not because the Yemeni government abused him, but rather because he abused his government.

3. In addition to implementing and enforcing the Water Law, the NWRA’s missions are to manage the nation’s water resources on a sustainable basis, to ensure satisfaction of basic water needs for all but especially the poor, and to establish a system of water allocation that is fair, yet flexible. The NWRA has branches in Sana’a, Ta’iz, Sa’ada, Aden, Hadhramaut and Hodeida.

4. Reflecting a somewhat different view, Mohammed al-Hamdi (interview, July 2011) claims that the root cause of the failure to enforce the laws designed to regulate and curtail groundwater consumption is not so much the loopholes or ‘gaps’ in the Water Law per se but rather “the lack of political will to enforce whatever provisions exist in the existing law even with its ‘gaps’”.

5. The tendency of upstream water users to appropriate significant quantities of water from their downstream counterparts is not solely a by-product of the contemporary machinations of politically connected rent-seeking interests. This pattern can also be traced to the British Abyan Scheme of the 1950s and other donor-supported projects which turned spate improvement into a central pillar of agricultural development policy and endowed upstream landowners with a significant advantage over their downstream counterparts, setting the stage for chronic tensions between these groups.