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“The problem begins with an increasingly cataclysmic water shortfall. Gerhard Lichtenthaeler, a specialist on this topic, wrote in 2010 how in many of the country’s mountainous areas, available drinking water – usually drawn from a spring or a cistern – is down to less than one quart per person per day. Its aquifers are being mined at such a rate that groundwater levels have been falling by 10 to 20 feet annually, threatening agriculture and leaving major cities without adequate safe drinking water. Sanaa could be the first capital city in the world to run dry.
And not just Sanaa: As a London Times headline put it, Yemen “could become first nation to run out of water.” Nothing this extreme has happened in modern times, although similar patterns of drought have developed in Syria and Iraq.
Scarce food resources, columnist David Goldman points out, threaten to leave large numbers of Middle Easterners hungry and one-third of Yemenis faced chronic hunger before the unrest. That number is growing quickly.
The prospect of economic collapse looms larger by the day. Oil supplies are reduced to the point that “Trucks and buses at petrol stations queue for hours, while water supply shortages and power blackouts are a daily norm,” according to Reuters. Productive activity is proportionately in decline.”
Read more: The Washington Times
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