By Gabrielle Wade
25 August 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: As many countries around the world deal with looming water shortages, Yemen is already dealing with a serious water crisis.
Yemen is located in the Middle East, where the dry and semi-arid conditions make it increasingly difficult for the locals to secure water. Additionally, Yemen itself has no rivers and must get most of its water from rain.
In response to these startling statistics, a workshop was launched earlier this month under the sponsorship of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to help locals manage the Water Basin Aden – Lahj – Abyan.
Program Implementation Officer for UNDP-National Water Resources Authority Qahtan Al-Asbahi told MediaGlobal, “The exact current water management problem is that the whole basin is without a water management plan; there is poor access to water supply and sanitation services to the people, water pollution by the sewage, and increasing of water demand in the area.”
The Aden branch of the General Authority of Water Resources organized the workshop to teach locals how to maintain the groundwater by reducing random drilling for water and rationalize water consumption.
Drilling for groundwater is a key issue to be dealt with; in the Sana’a Basin, for example, over 13,000 wells have been dug in the past thirty years. This digging threatens the future of water security by depleting the resources available.
The workshop had about 150 participants and “aimed to bring all water stakeholders together representing their local communities, local authorities, agencies and water user groups, and discussed the proposed final draft in the water management plan which was prepared earlier in consultation with the same groups mentioned,” according to Al-Asbahi.
All participants, along with local government authorities who were represented in the workshop, will be responsible for the implementation of the plan of action.
To create the plan, participants were presented with facts and statistics on managing water resources in Delta Abyan and Delta Tebn. Experts also shared lessons learned from the implementation of the Taiz governorate plan.
The efforts to maintain the water supply are very important to the local’s livelihood because, in rural areas, agriculture is the main source of income. Qat, a plant grown for its use as a stimulant, is the country’s main cash crop and requires a great deal of water. In the Sana’a Basin alone, it is estimated that the groundwater tables are falling as much as five to six meters per year, and Qat production is the primary reason for such water depletion.
Al-Asbahi said the workshop was held to increase “the knowledge of the local community, and their participation in the planning phase will help in reducing at least the problem’s sharpness.”
The main emphasis of the workshop was to support locals to regulate water pumping and use the improved irrigation systems, instead of inefficiently drilling for water themselves.
Already, the depletion of water resources in some areas has led to emigration from rural areas to larger cities, which has in turn led to larger water crises in the cities instead of dealing with the problem of water shortages in rural settings.
With a growing population and increasing water and food shortages worldwide, it is clear that Yemen is in need of a solution to their current water crisis. The UNDP and local government officials hope that increasing knowledge of water management will protect the water basins for future generations.