The Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) was established in May 2003 to reorganize the water sector, with the aim of creating an institutional structure for integrated water management and to prepare the necessary institutional and investment conditions to face the exacerbating water problem in Yemen. The MWE was charged with one of the most complex development problems in Yemen and its most challenging tasks, namely: the water scarcity problem and the challenges of providing drinking water to the urban and rural population, treating wastewater, water resources management and planning its use in light of the water law. The importance of water is well known, not only for drinking and food production, but also as a basis for sustainable development, especially given the strong interrelationships between the availability of water on the one hand and public health, unemployment, poverty, female education, and development in general on the other. Another challenging task of the MWE is abating environmental degradation manifested in exhausting, depleting and polluting (to various degrees) precious natural resources: vegetation, air, soil and water and taking appropriate measures to protect and conserve such vital resources as a basis for sustaining economic activity, upon which the development and population stability depends (particularly in the rural areas). In addition, the MWE is charged with protecting and conserving biodiversity, marine environment, nature reserves and protected zones; and with the follow-up of Yemen’s commitments as party to 12 regional and international environmental agreements.
Yemen is a water-scarce country, situated in an arid region with no permanent rivers. Historically, the population depended upon rainfall, springs, hand-dug wells and water harvesting in ponds, and behind dikes and dams of various sizes. Maximum well depths didn’t exceed few tens of meters and their water was lifted, in small quantities, by muscular, animal or human effort. No mechanical drilling rigs or pumps were used until the 1960s. Because Yemen is situated in an arid region, the annual per capita share of renewable water resources does not exceed 125 cubic meters (the international figure is 7500 cubic meters). This water scarcity gave water a prominent role in shaping Yemeni consciousness and civilization throughout history. The Mareb dam is one symbolic example of this vital role of water, another example being the agricultural mountain terraces. These terraces, which cover most Yemeni mountains, are in fact water-harvesting structures innovated by Yemeni farmers to retain scarce rainwater along with the precious fertile soil that sweep down the barren mountain-sides. These terraces may have been a testimony to Yemeni ingenuity. The opening of Yemen to modern well-drilling technology in the early seventies, coupled with the large cash inflow that followed during the oil boom, led to an extensive expansion of irrigated farming and a rush to drill water wells and buy pumps. In the absence of any regulatory controls on drilling, these developments led to the mining of groundwater aquifers in most water basins in the highland plateaus and in the coastal plains.
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