Water or War?

By Geneviève Lalonde

In the past, the city of Yemen was able to retrieve water by grinding crevasses in the rocks to capture the rainfall. Unfortunately, with climate change arising, this method became less and less efficient. This caused the population to go searching underground. They went looking deeper in the water aquifers and since 1998, the reserves are seen decreasing. Some families must wait six weeks until they get flowing water through their taps. With the instability along the borders of Saudi Arabia, this issue has been set aside.

The article by Peter Kenyon entitled “Obscured By War, Water Crisis Looms In Yemen” demonstrates that many different environmental policies are not being followed. There are two main policies missing namely the equity principle and the Market for conservation principle in order to ensure water is distributed in a fair way to all of the population. The government must step in and, amongst other, create incentives to ensure water is preserved ultimately leading to a reintroduction of the more traditional ways to collect water.

The article implies that the agriculture sector in Yemen uses up 85 percent of its available water and rather inefficiently. If we take into account the equity principle, there is a lack of fairness in this system. As Anwer Sahouly, the water expert for Yemen’s water reform effort states, “all civilization has grown around water. Water is life”. If water is life, by allowing water to be extracted at unfair proportions by the farmers, we are depriving the less fortunate people of Yemen from living. All this indicates a faulty equity plan.

There are many other matters that are “corrupt” about this system. In the 1970’s, some international monetary groups introduced incentives to the farmers. These incentives introduced them to drilling wells and the use of underground aquifers instead of the traditional rainwater captured crops. As these aquifer resources are nearing depletion, Kenyon reports “Yemenis are responding by drilling more and more illegal wells and pumping more water than ever”. The situation appears nearly out of control.

Under the Markets for conservation principle, we know that many countries have achieved remarkable results through water trading and incentives. A proper comparison for this issue would be what was done in rural Australia. It brought in an initiative to insure a secure water trading system. As our textbook, Environmental principles and policies by Sharon Beder, describes “water trading will enable those who can make the most money out of the water buy it and those who make less money sell it”. This worked in Australia because during drought it was more profitable for farmers to sell their water entitlements then to attempt to grow crops. For Yemen, this may mean introducing incentives for the Yemeni farmers to trade in a more proper manner. It may also mean being more forceful in reducing illegal drilling.

If the government took action, they could achieve this in a multitude of ways. They could introduce a water trading market. A market could introduce a proper value for the water, which would allow the water to be better allocated. As Beder demonstrates water trading has been successful in places such as Chile, Mexico, Peru, Australia as well as the USA where many of these places have implemented a price on water. They will then be forced to either make use of every last drop, or find resourceful ways of capturing the water to make a profit.

Clearly the Yemeni urban population is suffering and the government has made few signs of discouraging these actions to date. With the border rebellion crisis being their number one priority, they might not attend to it for a while. Unless proper incentives and policies are put in place soon, the growing population and shrinking water supply of Yemen will lead to a crisis situation.

References

Obscured By War, Water Crisis Looms In Yemen,

by Peter Kenyon - November 20^th 2009

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120619082&sc=emaf

Environmental Principles and Policies – an interdisciplinary introduction

By Sharon Beder