Water supply and sanitation in Yemen

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (October 2021)

Yemen: Water and Sanitation
Data
Access to an improved water source	55% (2014)[1]
Access to improved sanitation	53% (2014)[1]
Continuity of supply	mostly not continuous
Average urban water use (liter/capita/day)	between 37 (in Taiz) and 94 (in Aden) [2]
Average urban water and sewer bill (US$/month)	n/a
Share of household metering	n/a
Share of collected wastewater treated	n/a
Annual investment in water supply and sanitation	n/a
Sources of investment financing	Mainly by external donors
Institutions
Decentralization to municipalities	Yes
National water and sanitation company	Being phased out (NWSA)
Water and sanitation regulator	Planned
Responsibility for policy setting	Ministry of Water and Environment
Sector law	Yes (2002), focused on water resources
Number of urban service providers	15
Number of rural service providers	n/a

Water supply and sanitation in Yemen is characterized by many challenges as well as some achievements. A key challenge is severe water scarcity, especially in the Highlands, prompting The Times of London to write "Yemen could become the first nation to run out of water".^[3] A second key challenge is a high level of poverty, making it very difficult to recover the costs of service provision. Access to water supply sanitation in Yemen is as low or even lower than that in many sub-Saharan African countries. Yemen is both the poorest country and the most water-scarce country in the Arab world. Third, the capacity of sector institutions to plan, build, operate and maintain infrastructure remains limited. Last but not least the security situation makes it even more difficult to improve or even maintain existing levels of service.

The average Yemeni has access to only 140 cubic meters of water per year (101 gallons per day) for all uses, while the Middle Eastern average is 1,000 m³/yr, and the internationally defined threshold for water stress is 1,700 cubic meters per year.^[4] Yemen's groundwater is the main source of water in the country but the water tables have dropped severely leaving the country without a viable source of water. For example, in Sana'a, the water table was 30 meters below surface in the 1970s but had dropped to 1200 meters below surface by 2012 in some areas. The groundwater has not been regulated by Yemen's governments.^[5] Even before the revolution, Yemen's water situation had been described as increasingly dire by experts who worried that Yemen would be the "first country to run out of water".^[6] Agriculture in Yemen takes up about 90% of water in Yemen even though it only generates 6% of GDP - however a large portion of Yemenis are dependent on small-scale subsistence agriculture. Half of agricultural water in Yemen is used to grow khat, a narcotic that most Yemenis chew. This means that in such a water-scarce country as Yemen, where half the population is food-insecure, 45% of the water withdrawn from the ever-depleting aquifers is used to grow a narcotic that does not feed Yemenis.^[5]

Due to the 2015 Yemeni Civil War, the situation is increasingly dire. 80% of the country's population struggles to access water to drink and bathe. Bombing has forced many Yemenis to leave their homes for other areas, and so wells in those areas are under increasing pressure.^[7] In addition, water infrastructure itself has been targeted by warplanes. For example, on January 8, 2016, a major desalination plant in the city of Mokha was destroyed by a Saudi bomb, which caused the disruption of water supply not of Mokha but also of Ta'iz.^[8] In addition to the impacts of the war, global warming and human overpopulation have also contributed to the destruction of Yemen's water supply.^[9] As of June 2017,^[update] Yemen is facing the world's worst outbreak of cholera, caused by lack of clean drinking water. Over 2000 people died from the highly contagious bacterial infection in the four months from April to August 2017.^[10][when?]