Last March, The Executive Director of the World Food Programme David Beasley warned that Yemen is heading towards the biggest famine in modern history.
“In Yemen there are over 16 million people now face crisis levels of hunger or worse. And we are headed straight towards the biggest famine in modern history. It is hell on earth in many places in Yemen right now,” said Beasley addressing the UN Security Council’s session held on Yemen.
The UN official noted that aside the apparent shortage of food and medical supplies that rescue life of around 400,000 children, Yemen is living another misery of fuel blockage that caused power shortage at various medical facilities. “Most hospitals only have electricity in their intensive care units because fuel reserves are so low,” he noted.
Apparently, this drop of fuel supply to Yemen because of war has serious reflection on many other activities including cultivation that mainly depends on groundwater that needs energy to be lifted from deep wells for irrigation.
As they say in Egypt, “Necessity is mother of Invention”, the Yemenis were not actually in need of inventing something new to their power shortage crisis. Instead, they just turned to their natural wealth of solar power given the fact that Yemen is one of the best located countries in the world for solar power. They expanded in utilising solar power to generate electricity for both urban and rural regions.
A recent report issued by Berlin-based Energy Access and Development Programme (EADP) described Yemen’s overwhelming adoption of solar power as a revolution.
According to the EADP, which focuses on access to clean and affordable energy, solar power went from being a niche product, used in just a few households in 2012, to become the main source of energy for Yemeni households. From 2016 onwards, its use has rocketed: “75% of the urban population and 50% of the rural population are estimated to receive solar energy,” EADP researchers concluded. That even included some communities that had never had electricity before.
“The solar power revolution in Yemen has clearly saved lives — it has, for example, powered hospitals and medical clinics. It has also transformed lives,” EADP report said, noting that young Yemeni women have made international headlines for setting up solar micro-grids for their own communities. Besides, a UN study suggested that solar-powered schools have reduced pupils’ drop-out rates. It added that farmers have replaced polluting diesel generators with solar-powered pumps to irrigate crops.
One could not assume that this development has reached all regions of Yemen with the ongoing military conflict between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government forces in different parts of the country. Yet, one could assume that resorting to solar power has lessened much the famine crisis and provided electricity to health facilities in many parts of the country.
However, another international report recently published by the Conflict and Environment Observatory in UK warned that this excessive dependence on this clean affordable source of energy have encouraged Yemeni farmers to increase consumption of ground water, the main source of irrigation in Yemen.
“While the lights may be on all over Yemen now, very soon there might be no water,” the organisation known as CEOBS said, noting that it is solar power that is to blame.
The CEOBS researchers were using satellite remote sensing when they discovered that groundwater in western Yemen was at its lowest level since satellite records started in 2002. It was only later that they concluded that the increased availability of solar power was probably playing a big part in those worryingly low levels.
So, does this mean that the Yemenis have to choose between suspending or at least limiting the utilisation of solar power in irrigation even if this would lead to reductions of crops and increase the threat of famine? Or should they continue to grow more crops and risk suffering from water scarcity in the near future?
Actually, in war torn country, it is hard to convince people to give up their basic needs of food, water and electricity to ensure sustainable supply of water for the coming generations.
Therefore, the solution is to help Yemenis expand in their use of solar energy with its wider application of water desalination rather than mere pumping of groundwater. This would necessitate the creation of costly water desalination plants on the long southern and western coasts of Yemen. Apparently, such projects could not be created in Yemen except after ending the seven-year-conflict between the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi-supported Yemeni governmental forces. Until then, one can do nothing but to express admiration of and support to the Yemenis who struggle to survive such hardship by turning to their own resources to make a living.
