Yemen is has one of the world’s top population growth rates (2.72-), yet practices agriculture in the arid and semi-arid climates. Yemen is now facing one of the world’s most severe water crises, which poses threats to its economic foundation and social fabric. The shortage of surface water is compounded by low levels of ground water (40 meters below normal). To meet the demands of the population, deeper water wells had to be drilled in order to access the falling water tables. Intensive drilling has produced infiltration of polluted water and salinization of the agricultural soil.
This dependency on groundwater has produced the possibility that large portion of Yemen could run out of fresh water in the near future and become the first “ecologically failed state.” Sana’a and the fertile agriculture regions of the north also face serious water challenges. Yemen has not met the per-capita World Bank standard for water security since mid-20th century. Desalinization of seawater is too costly and technologically out of reach for Yemen’s overly dependent economy. The ongoing war has now interrupted the U.N. Development Program, which aimed to address the groundwater depletion problem by returning to a more traditional method of irrigation by relying on the existing community level abilities. full: http://www.juancole.com/2015/04/political-ecological-shiites.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
