Sana'a's Dehydration Issues

Water, according to almost anyone involved in Yemen’s future, is the single biggest problem facing the country today. One need only look at statistics in order to glean an appreciation for the severity of the water shortage – according to the UNDP, Yemenis, with a per capita yearly water allotment of 198 cubic meters, fall far below the water poverty line of 1000 cubic meters. The reasons politicians, journalists, and interested citizens give include the high birth rate, rampant qat cultivation, the drilling of illegal wells that pollute what groundwater there is, a lack of appropriate damming and rain water retention systems, and myriad other sociological, industrial, and political factors.
All the above issues are real threats to Yemen’s water stability and therefore to Yemen’s future. All played and continue to play a role in the water crisis. However, no investigation would be complete without an exploration of the geological factors involved. While it is true that qat cultivation and illegal wells exacerbate the water problem, these and similar issues are interwoven with the sheer geological truth that Yemen, and Sana’a in particular, is a dry country, with limited means of recharging the aquifers that have kept it alive.
Aquifers are underground repositories of water, and the reason why places without access to rivers or lakes – such as Sana’a – are viable and, indeed, have flourished in the past. There are various types of aquifers. According to Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, “There are two [basic] types of aquifers: replenishable and non-replenishable (fossil) aquifers.” Replenishable aquifers have methods of recharge, often thanks to the flow of groundwater, such as in the Midwestern United States, and sometimes thanks to significant rainfall. Fossil aquifers, on the other hand, are “aquifers with no appreciable modern recharge and which cannot discharge naturally…they cannot be utilized sustainably as any withdrawal eventually will exhaust the resource,” writes Gabriel Eckstein, director of the International Water Project. In short, fossil aquifers are “dead” aquifers. Neither rainwater nor groundwater flow can recharge these aquifers to any significant degree; the water is old and, though sometimes potable, stagnant. Most importantly, fossil aquifers have an expiration date.
Sana’a rests on a plateau in the mountains, the same mountains that block the majority of the clouds that might supply the city with rainwater. Sana’a’s main supply of water is, unfortunately, a fossil aquifer, albeit a large one. Moreover, Sana’a’s own geological history works against its water supply. This area was formed long ago in part by volcanic activity and “the older the volcanic rocks, the less permeable they usually are,” writes J.C. Nonner in his text Introduction to Hydrology. Though southern Arabia has seen quite a lot of geological activity through the ages, Sana’a itself has seen comparatively little, and thus the igneous (volcanic) rock that constitutes the aquifer is fairly old. Therefore, not only is the aquifer cut off from recharge, it is difficult to utilize, wells must be deep, and recharge by artificial means is close to impossible, especially for a country as poor as Yemen.
One might ask how, if the Sana’a aquifer is a fossil aquifer, the city has managed to survive and even grow throughout its long history. Sana’a is, after all, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The answer lies in demography and the speed with which Sana’a developed from a small though famous city – Ibn Batutah gave the place rave reviews, saying “Sana’a is not to be missed” – into the busy, dense metropolis that it is today.
Water use is very clearly connected to the number of people who need water. Until the 1960’s Sana’a was a city of under 100,000 people. Water use was correspondingly low, whether for agricultural, industrial, or simply drinking purposes. Even though rain is not common in Sana’a, the inhabitants made use of the precipitation there was, cultivating cisterns of the types one finds in Thula and other assorted cities and villages throughout Yemen. Farmers in the area were particularly adept at using rainwater, and as there was not such a high demand for water thanks to the small population, did not have to drill deep wells to find water. There was a balance between the number of inhabitants and the amount of available water and, perhaps most importantly, a limited number of wells.
Since 1959, Sana’a’s population has expanded by a factor of twenty to approximately 2.3 million residents. The country itself has also developed at a similarly rapid rate, resulting in poor urban planning, the drilling of myriad illegal wells to meet the city’s water needs. In addition, the city’s area has expanded and with it, paved streets. This means that what little water does fall on the area cannot be absorbed into the earth. Anyone looking at Al-Zubaydi Street outside the Old City on a rainy day can see that the water has nowhere to go. The UNDP, the World Bank, and several other organizations involved in Yemen’s water crisis point out that the damming techniques currently in use, both above and under ground, are inadequate as well. As a result, says Lester Brown, “the estimated annual water extraction of 224 million tons exceeds the annual recharge of 42 million tons (even fossil aquifers experience some recharge) by a factor of five, dropping the water table 6 meters per year.”
Naturally, qat cultivation (agriculture, and specifically qat, account for the overwhelming majority of water use), Sana’a’s high birth rate, rapid modernization, and illegal wells have severely deleterious effects on the water crisis facing the capital. The lack of discussion surrounding the actual geological aspects of that crisis, however, is frightening, and does nothing to ameliorate the situation.
In spite of concerted efforts by several countries, including Germany and The Netherlands, and considerable international investment, Yemen still faces a disaster. Many agree that the Sana'a Basin Aquifer will run dry by 2025, making life in the capital close to impossible and adding yet another crisis to the myriad problems already facing the country's leaders and inhabitants. According to one graduate student at Sana’a University who requested anonymity, the only thing that can save the city in its current form is "awareness, education, and an immediate, enforced reduction in water usage for anything not absolutely necessary to life. But that," he continued, "was needed yesterday."